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

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