What is it about the marketing mindset that makes it feel so familiar and so unfamiliar at the same time to my designer’s view of the world? Why do designers and marketers talk past one another if they aren’t very careful? This is an important question. Marketing is close to design, and addresses many of … Continue reading Design vs marketing mindset
A list of design theory/practice ideas I’ve had that could become talks, all of which include monographesque provocatively non-descriptive titles with almost-clarifying subtitles, separated by colons: “No Pain, No Gain: Necessary Suffering in Innovation” – The agonizing experience of navigating the vacuum between framings fits poorly inside the fantasy image of creativity peddled by Design … Continue reading Design talks
Putting it as succinctly as possible, design thinking is a perspective on problems: Problem finding All people-thing problems are design problems. Alternative wordier definition: all problems that involve systems of interacting objects and subjects (“soft system” problems) are design problems. Design problems are often misdiagnosed as engineering, management and marketing-advertising problems. Problem shaping Design problems … Continue reading What is design thinking?
Combining the core insight of Design Thinking — “everything is design” — with the truism that “design by committee produces mediocrity”, it begins to appear that the widespread (mis)use of meetings to shape collective action might be one of the great engines of contemporary collective frustration. Much of our lives are mired in mediocrity because … Continue reading Design Thinking by committee
I find the term Design Thinking inadequate. First, the term Design Thinking belongs to IDEO. As far as I know, they made the term up, they use it for marketing and it remains closely associated with them. It is uncomfortably too many things at once: a semi-grassroots movement, a (vague) methodology, a bag of tricks, … Continue reading Universal Design Praxis
(Another pass at my design vs engineering concept. It remains un-nailed. It’s important, though, so I will continue to spiraling into the gravitational center of this perspective until I find the standpoint from which it is best said.) Social engineering failed and will always fail, not because it is hubristic for humanity to try to … Continue reading Design
(Here we go again, with another iteration of my engineering vs. designing theme.) * * * Design begins with trying to please. This naturally progresses to trying to understand better how to please, and later, trying to cultivate the best possible relationship — that is, a reciprocal one. * In situations where people are empowered … Continue reading Design and democracy
What could be more passe than to define Design Thinking now — now that it has been over-hyped, described in a million ways, implemented very glamorously and expensively, found to not live up to the hype and finally publicly declared dead? Nonetheless, Design Thinking ought to be defined, as crisply as possible, because it is … Continue reading Design thinking thoughts
The main difference between conceiving design as the design of an experience (as opposed to the design of an artifact) is that with experience design the design problem is conceived phenomenologically. What is aimed for is not an object of some particular characteristic, but rather a specific relationship between a person and an object. It … Continue reading Experience design as opposed to…
Some designers focus their attention on the artifact they’re crafting, and believe their craftsmanship will naturally result in an artifact people will love. This type of design is driven by invention. The primary source of inspiration comes from the possibilities of the medium. Some designers focus their attention on the people for whom the design … Continue reading Insight-driven design
Tim Morton explains Speculative realism: Speculative realism is the umbrella term for a movement that comprises such scholars as Graham Harman, Jane Bennett, Quentin Meillassoux, Patricia Clough, Iain Hamilton Grant, Levi Bryant, Ian Bogost, Steven Shaviro, Reza Negarestani, Ray Brassier, and an emerging host of others such as Ben Woodard and Paul Ennis. All are … Continue reading Usefulness, Usability and Desirability of philosophies
Experimancy is a more alchemical expression for laboratory science: the divination of truth by inviting materials to speak to us in their own sign language. This is how Bruno Latour taught me to see science, and design, and finally, all knowledge. And I will say it again: If the practice of engineering helps us craft … Continue reading “Experimancy”
The distinction between discovering what is, versus creating what yet isn’t covers over a region of action that is far more important and common than either — a region Bruno Latour called (after Étienne Souriau) called instauration, the act of discovering-creating in collaboration with the thing being brought into existence. Anyone who actually crafts real … Continue reading Instaurationalism
We apprehend that something is, but we may not comprehend what it is. “Apprehending that” establishes something’s existence. “Comprehending what” establishes its conceptual relations within our understanding. Sometimes (often, in fact) we apprehend something, but we cannot immediately comprehend it. We either ignore it as irrelevant, gloss over it, or are forced to figure out … Continue reading Second verse, same as the first
(I’m trying to get back to publishing my ideas, even when they are far from perfect. For some reason I’ve been inclined to leave most of what I write private, but I’m going to make myself start putting things out there again. ) My immersion in the philosophical work of Jan Zwicky has given me … Continue reading Re-cranking the writing machine
Too many people think art is the production of interesting, pleasing or entertaining sounds, images, performances, etc. This mode of making produces sterile artistic product. We have forgotten that real art founds whole new ways to exist in the world. Art is not here to be looked at, listened to or experienced. Art is here … Continue reading Art is enworldment
Someone posted this article on my company slack about Apple finally understanding that their brainless, aesthete’s arrogance was causing them to make much prettier, but far worse, products. I must say, since I bought my latest MacBook it in 2018, I’ve been infuriated by the sheer wrongheadedness of its design. So, of course, this inspired … Continue reading Apple is better off without Jony Ive’s glitz
I’ve been a serious pain in the ass lately, even relative to my usual unspectacular behavior. I’m in a situation that has been extracting too many of the wrong things from me, too relentlessly, for too long, and it is undermining my mental health. It’s all got me questioning myself, and my ability to get … Continue reading Justifying my frustrating ways
As preparation for writing my next book, tentatively titled Enworldment (A Philosophy of Design of Philosophy), I’m indexing the articles I’ve written on approaching philosophy as a design discipline. Some of the earlier articles have a blunt simplicity to them that I want to recover, at least for the introduction. I’m going to list some of … Continue reading Enworldment
Thank you Richard Rorty: “The more original a book or a kind of writing is, the more unprecedented, the less likely we are to have criteria in hand, and the less point there is in trying to assign it to a genre. We have to see whether we can find a use for it. If … Continue reading Genre Trouble