DMDN371

In the last lecture we’ve asked our selves:

Embedded Media
As computing power leaves the screen and enters into our daily lives, how are we connected and disconnected to our media and technologies?

through story telling we can understand our world and our society in which we live as beings and as designers. as marshall mcluhan said medium is the message: the container says it all!
as I dare to sy that designers are storytellers

We’ve investigated this question through the theories discussed in the course:

Creativity:  intrinsically part of design is creativity – our engine, our fuel but also our excuse to not do so
designers are needed by society to bring solutions that include user’s need and desires in living in a mediated world

Interaction Design: in which we use id models to understand the user and the context: by doing that we’re enable to respond to innovations and changes triggered through society-pull and technology-push. The interaction-designer plays a crucial role in translating all different needs set by the system, the users, the different actors, the companies etc…

Ludology: by understanding that pure play is one of the main basic concepts of civilisation we can guide the society in the technology driven mediated world. Why? instinct is petitio principii: they do (play) it because they enjoy it.
Is this true for a mediated world? What if we incorporate play and approach it with seriousness will we be entering a wanted magic circle of mediated world: or is the power of play overrated?

Phenomenology: it helps us to understand phenomena through the user senses. It studies how things appear to consciousness or are given in experience, and not how they are in themselves, even if it is known that the given contains more than or is different from what is presented. What does the mediated world mean? Where does it come from? How is it experienced? The answers bring us closer to the phenomenon that is lived. Technology is often seen as a black-box that steadfastly serves human needs, research has shown that is not the case. Fe. Heidegger suggests that technology is based around man and the organised unfolding it affects.

Ethnography: Is it the art and science of describing a group or culture that will guide us as designers in this shifting world? What group would you suggest to watch? And have we learned from the past in how people communicate and embrace technology as an aspect that creates identity?

Networked Society: More in more will we be living in an mediated networked society: “our societies are increasingly structured around the bipolar opposition of the Net and the Self”.  In which we see the Net = organizational forms powered by network structures and The Self = people try adapt and reaffirm to change caused by the net and that shapes the network society. Is this a new emerging trend or does the mediated world exist because of this?

Perceiving it from my Dutch radical pragmatism as symbolic pragmatism shows that A design and engineering culture in which building consensus is historically important in a society which had to cooperate to construct a country from land reclaimed from the sea. This has bred a very particular society in which from the outset engineering, planning, consensus and cooperation were a matter of survival. This has created a uniquely pragmatic culture in which what we are calling radical and symbolic pragmatism tend to emphasise infrastructure as much in the creative industries as anywhere else. This has pros and cons. The radical pragmatism and the commitment to large scale engineering and infrastructure can be seen in the media creative communities. Holland was the first (and possibly only) country in Europe to have a total nationwide cable infrastructure. This was a missed opportunity and demonstrates some of the limitations of the dutch polder model when it comes to global competitiveness.
In the era of cross media networks the Netherlands is struggling to learn the lessons and adapt to a more open and competitive market place. It is recognized that infrastructure is vital but in our era it is not enough. Attempts to integrate science, cultural content developers and applications developers within a network of the highest level of infrastructure. Having cultural organizations involved in developing applications and content, in at the ground floor is a hopeful sign that recognition that media and the networks are too important to be left to engineers alone. (Humble Thanks to Prof. David Garcia with whom I explored this issue)

Jay Doblin: an object is frozen information: how we sell, market it is the way we perceive it
how can we look at defrosting in order to shift towards futurism?

Download sheets here

Link to reference style

Since late 60s onwards we see a shift from hierarchies to network throughout all different contexts and society. In particular the field of design is a good representation of the networked society. As designers design for the networked society but also are part of the networked society. This is applicable to both their field of application and the field of discipline. One of the main characteristics of the creative industries is that it’s an informal network; which is in contrast other established fields such as science.

Download the sheets here

Reflection is not about putting your work in front of a mirror it’s about finding the aspects that have no expiry date…

What I mean with that is that by doing critical reflection on a design form, its existence and even its influence will be sustained. Critical reflection is away of learning from practice, theory and objects. The aspects that are being learned from it create new knowledge according to Weick (1993) and Thomassen (2001).

Critical Reflection of Design Practice:
Elements we will discuss in the lectures are:
- What is reflection?
- How to set up critical reflection?
- How to write a critical reflection?

Can you really GENERATE new products, ideas or ways of viewing things ?
Critical reflection enables a designer to crucially navigate through the designing process and to consider how it relates to the theoretical imbedding. In order to understand the dynamic aspects of design forms and their potential for use and language for the future, one needs to critically reflect. This phase focusses on how to reflect in both a practical and theoretical level.

Download the sheets here

Check paper on knowledge management

Check paper on projective techniques

Hereby the briefs of:

- assignment 3

- assignment 4

Also assignment 3 requires uploading to the Rdrive in oder to be printed: here are the guidelines

Hand in 3
- A1 Poster
- hand in on Friday 26th BEFORE 9.00 AM
-> upload on R drive: Folder
hand-in\DMDN&IDDN371\Printing
- Pay $19.80 to Arthur Mahon

- Posters can be collected from Arthur later that day
- Monday morning put your poster on the panels in the hall way
- Week long exhibition
- Friday 3rd of October Tutors will evaluate posters
- then Exhibition closes
- keep your posters

Ethnography is the art and science of describing a group or culture. (Dr. David M. Fetterman of Stanford University)

In particular design ethnography is of crucial importance for design research and design thinking. Imagine stepping into the culture of your users; experience the world through their senses. Understand their routnines, their dreams, opinions and even their fantasies. As a designer you need to be on top of your design, the intended experience and the proposed audience: ethnography is your guide for being successful. It’s a diffiult guide, it might be a bumpy ride but it supports, helps and inspires.

Check the sources for help.

download the sheets here

download paper on design ethnography here

check the REMINI project here

Here you can find the schedule of the remaining course period. Be aware that this can change!!

“Because the essence of technology is nothing technological, essential reflection upon technology and decisive confrontation with it must happen in a realm that is, on the one hand, akin to the essence of technology and, on the other, fundamentally different from it. Such realm is art…” Heidegger (1977, p. 35)

First introduced by Johann Heinrich Lambert in 1764 in “Neues Organon” as ‘Science of Appearance’, since then picked up by Kant, Husselr, Heidegger, Hegel, Merleau-Ponty. It’s a descriptive study of understanding the world through senses

(1) A description of the givens of immediate experience.
(2) An attempt to capture experience in process as lived, through descriptive analysis.
(3) A method of knowing that “begins with the things themselves, that tries to find a ‘first opening’ on the world free of our perceptions and interpretations, together with a methodology for reducing the interference of our preconceptions.
(4) A method of learning about another person by listening to their descriptions of what their subjective world is like for them, together with an attempt to understand this in their own terms as fully as possible, free of our preconceptions and interferences.

Husserl

- basics of phenomenology is the intention
- the object is intentional object
- the relationship is the study
- distinction between ‘noetic’ and ‘noematic’

Merleau-Ponty

- there is NO division between the subject and the object
- understanding this relationship through observing phenomena from a first-person perspective
-  intercorporeality: “empty heads turned towards the world”
- our bodies turn to other bodies
- mastery of phenomenology and design is achieved when the action is “purposeful but without purpose”

Heidegger

Makes connection to design and phenomenology by understanding “interplay”, interplay = person and the object in use. He also claims it’s hifting from “being present-at-hand” to “being ready-to hand”.

Sheets of lecture here

suggest to read “introduction to phenomenology” Dermot Moran (2000)

Other links:
Stanford programme on Phenomenology
Fullerton programme on Phenomenology

Read this paper during the break:

de-landa-philosophies-of-design-the-case-of-modeling-software.pdf