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March 23, 2006
Problem Solving and Ambiguity
Attempting to locate the feeling of being monstrous (as in the Church of Mau) I've been forcing myself to read, and engage in to some extent, the Design Observer blog. I tried the Speak Up one too, but I really couldn't stand it... just too painful (maybe I should have kept at it then!?). I've been trying to figure out why I can't stomach much of the discourse that is central to design, and subsequently why I seem to have very little appreciation of/for 'good design'. The answer to this (which I don't really have now anyway) is not brief enough for me to articulate here, but will be, I think, the back-bone of my thesis. I'm beginning to write it now, and increasingly I'll be pulling back from this blog I think... as Emilie pointed out, it generally seems to fracture and fragment my thinking... and I need to spend a lot of time in a dark room on my own figuring out how to piece it all back together! Right now I just want to post a couple of points of reference...
1.Problem Solving... commonly served up as a fundamental description of what designers do. I don't think Graphic Design, particularly, is 'problem solving'... any more so than deciding what to have for dinner tonight is problem solving.
2.Ambiguity... been reading an interesting paper by Bill Gaver (Et al) called "Ambiguity as a Resource for Design". It's interesting to me primarily because it disrupts (or would appear to disrupt) #1 above. Gaver's interests are in the interpretive relationship between an object, or system, and it's user... my reading of it replaces 'user' with 'designer' (I'm specifically interested in how designers engage with Design).
Gaver is attempting to offer alternatives to the very linear type of process described by 'problem solving'. There are a couple of things I wanted to mention (esp for Yoko [who's read it] and Laurene's feedback) about this in relation to my stuff... [a] the last part of the text reads like my monster manifestos, a ten point declaration for ambiguity in design. But that [b] their best examples come from an 'art' context, and the 'design' examples are weak in contrast. I guess I want to suggest that this is because (as the authors are aware) ambiguity and uncertainty aren't generally considered to useful to designers... so it's not something that's been well explored in design, as opposed to the fine arts. But also that their focus is 'product design' where the intention is generally 'usefulness'. It made me think about how examples could more easily have been pulled from Graphic Design, and that as a sub-domain of 'Design', Graphic Design is closer, more generally, to the generally more 'useless' (and retinal?) domain we call 'art'.
I've been thinking a lot lately, sparked by something Aaron said, about how much more engaging I usually find reading and talking about music. I've been thinking about the implications of teaching design in an art school, and about arguments I had last year to not separate the design department from the art school via a change in name. But it wasn't because (and I was hugely misunderstood/misinterpreted here) I wanted design to be seen as art specifically, more because I just didn't see that the distinction was useful. I thought the value of the course lay in it's fuzziness, and I think I'm starting to see that that's (partly) where my monsters have been coming from... a kind of fracture or dislocation of discourses and communities of practice. I'm not really interested in professional practice... but I'm not really interested in making art either?
Posted by Luke Wood at March 23, 2006 05:21 AM
Comments
In another paper by Gaver called 'Cultural Probes'...
"We approach research into new technologies from the traditions of artist-designers rather than the more typical science- and engineering-based approaches."
A lot of what I found interesting about this text was closely related to some of the things Lisa's been talking about lately... her dislike for terminolgies that we use to validate research for example, and the idea that rather than providing facts and 'findings' etc, design research could be evaluated through its potential to create 'possibility'. More from Gaver...
"Intead of designing solutions for user needs, then, we work to provide opportunities to discover new pleasures, new forms of sociability, and new cultural forms."
"Inspiration not Information... we were after "inspirational data" with the probes, to stimulate our imaginations rather than define a set of problems."
In The National Grid we've republished a text of Max Hailstone's (1985) in which he uses the designer/doctor analogy... we were being a little tongue-in-cheek... and it was funny to hear Gaver say that they wanted to avoid being cast "in the role of doctors, diagnosing user problems." Obviously I'm really interested in this in the sense that I can relate to it, but also I've been thinking a lot about why it is that 'most' designers seem to actually want to be cast in that way?
I really enjoyed the blatent honesty about this text, his use of words like "pleasure" and "delight"...
"Throughout the project, we have viewed aesthetic and conceptual pleasure as a right rather than a luxury. We didn't work on the aesthetics of the probes simply to make them appealing or motivating but because we believe aesthetics to be an integral part of functionality, with pleasure a criterion for design equal to efficiency or usability.
We worked to make the probe material delightful, but not childish or condescending."
While I like the way they talk about the project though, I have to admit that I don't really 'like' the work... but I don't think I need to get into that here?
Posted by: Luke at March 24, 2006 06:14 AM
Could Heller's interview, 'Elliott Earls� General Incompetence', offer another useful point of reference here?
-- Excerpt --
Heller: You are, for lack of a better term, a designer-performer, a niche you certainly carved out (though I see a relationship to the Dadas and particularly Kurt Schwitters). How did this come about? What made it so difficult for you to follow the straight and narrow professional path?
Earls: I'm currently finishing up an essay for a small book that Cranbrook is publishing on my work. The essay is entitled �A Pygmy Raised by Giants.� (with apologies to Robert Anton Wilson). In the essay I discuss the idea that Paul Rand is still the archetype for the vast majority of graphic/info/interactive designers, and that he was a pygmy raised by giants. I postulate that he fundamentally misunderstood the work of men like Kurt Schwitters, and that the institutions of design (schools, museums and magazines) are bastions of neo-conservatism that seek to define design solely in terms of a designer/client relationship and a traditional problem solving methodology. Now needless to say, there are exceptions to the rule, but I'm talking about it as a whole. There was a period after World War I where some of the greatest artists of the time (the giants of which I speak) were as important to the history of architecture, painting or photography as they were to the history of design. I hear all of the time that what I do is not design. Well, frankly, I see that as a damning indictment of our times, not of my work.
-- Ends --
Full interview at http://journal.aiga.org/content.cfm?ContentAlias=_getfullarticle&aid=923055
Posted by: Kim at March 26, 2006 02:44 PM
Hell yeah that's a useful point of reference!
I've talked about Earls elswhere in this research - in other ways (more about process) - but this quote really ties up what I was thinking about him then with my more 'general' practice-oriented approach now.
Cheers Kim!
Posted by: Luke at March 28, 2006 11:15 AM
Had a read of the whole interview... I have to say I find Heller really frustrating in that I always feel like the conversation/text could head off in a direction I'm interested in, but then he always takes the road you imagined he'd take even before He'd started... This bit was really interesting in terms of my paper, but Heller fails to tease it out... I guess some blame could go on Earls for the 'brief' and not very useful answer?
Heller: Given the peculiar vocabulary that you've created, and the fact that in mainstream circumstances you've been “incompetent,” do you have a definition of design - indeed what is good design?
Earls: As I mentioned previously, in the essay for the Cranbrook book I attempt to address this issue in a bit more depth. But essentially I think that the entire issue of a design “definition” needs to be readdressed. I'm looking at a different historical model for my practice than what is currently (and I must use the word here) “sanctioned” by the institutions of design. You mentioned Kurt Schwitters. I would add El Lissitsky, John Heartfield, and Piet Zwart.
... anyway I think much of my paper will be me "readdressing" my own definition of design, and looking at that in relation to broader more established ideas.
Was thinking I might just be cheeky and email Earls, asking for a copy of the text he refers to?
Posted by: Luke at March 28, 2006 11:36 AM
Yes! (You would think he must have finished it by now)
Posted by: Kim at March 28, 2006 08:01 PM