GRAP 2030 // Week 4 // Reading / Video // Rhetoric

Design as Rhetoric

‘If one idea could be found central in design studies, it most likely would be communication. Directly or indirectly, this idea and its related themes have animated more discussion of design theory and practice than any other. (Buchanan 1989: 4).’

Rhetoric to practical design outcomes.

Steer user behaviour and actions in relation to context.

Whats the function of communication design?

Aims to initiate action within the viewer, whether that is to do, think or feel something.

What is the message? Appeal to emotion, sense of reason.

Nike, Just do it tells us what to do.

Talk back to your parents initiates rebellions in teens by calling us to vote.

South Australia doorway to experience.

BP as future of clean, green energy (beyond petroleum).

Emma Watson wants us to fall “in love”.

Functions of Communication Design

Inform: clarify, explain, identify;

Enlighten: reveal;

Persuade: suggest, [motivate]

(Bowers 1999: 6)

‘Perhaps the most important thing that [visual communication] design does is give communications resonance… Resonance helps the designer to realise clear public goals: to instruct, to delight, and to motivate.’ (Meggas 1989)

‘Four functions of graphic design: information, persuasion, decoration, and magic.’ (Barnard 2005: 14–16)

What does resonance mean? A particular feeling or experience you can associate with the object. It is a memory which repeats and creates something new when viewed as something novel.

So what do we mean by communication design as a ‘rhetorical practice’?

‘Design is rhetorical whenever the aesthetic value of form is also considered as a means of pleasing, instructing and informing or being shaped for an intended effect. (Buchanan 1985: 4).’

Triangle of Inform, Enlighten, Persuade (why is this a triangle?)

‘Rhetoric is the “art or discipline that deals with the use of discourse … to inform or persuade or motivate an audience’. (Corbett and Connors, 1999: 1).

Practical art about doing something and having an effect tint he world.

What is rhetoric about?

If we understand, we can use it.

Classical rhetoric dating back to ancient Greence. 5th Century BCE (Plato, the sophists). A way to encourage and use speech to construct an argument to persuade people to think or act as one way or another.

New rhetoric: developed in latter 20th Century. (Burke: literary theory; Perelman: philosophy, law).

Emphasis on appealing to the views and values of the particularly audiences and structuring of argument.

Objects of study are discursive techniques that aim to incite/heighten an audience’s attachment to the values and beliefs of the argument being presented.

See who or what we are by way of purpose and response.

Rhetoric is commonly referred to as persuasion itself, but Aristotle’s definition is not persuasion per se but the technique of discovering the persuasive aspects of any given subject-matter.

The new rhetoric is concerned with the effective use of reason within these fields

To urge for the better

to dissuade from harm

Advertising blurs these boundaries and become open for debate.

Examples: Stop Sign.

If we don’t act on message we can injure others, ourselves, or receive another penalty. We understand the visual attributes of the sign—the form is an octagon, the colour red, the word stop.

Aspirational poster (nike) based on movement, image, be godlike. Move more. Move better. Its associating a feeling and intent with the poster itself.

Statements include

Move more. Move better.

Be a better athlete.

Toughest battles happen within ourselves.

Explosive speed.

Everyone loses games. Few change them.

Gravity will never be the same.

You’re travelling through another dimensions.

Test your faith daily.

Give me where to stand, and I will move the earth.

Just do it.

Find your greatness.

Provocation to test desires and to make our lives better.

‘When married wit the emotive power of narrative to transport, move and inspire empathy in us.’

Greatness is not some rare DNA strand. It is no more unique than breathing. We are all capable of it. All of us.

Three kinds of rhetoric:

Deliberative: (political, advisory): addresses the future, the kinds of which are ‘exhortation’ and ‘deterrence’.

Forensic: (legal) deals with the past, the kinds of which are ‘protection’ and ‘defence’.

Display: deals with the present, kinds of which are ‘raise’ or ‘censure’.

Within each kind, the audience is a budget:

– in deliberative rhetoric: a judge of the future.

– in forensic: a judge of the past.

– in display, the audience is more spectator

Three modes of appeal

ethos: (voice) character, integrity, credibility: the design creates a relationship of identification with an audience/user.

pathos: (feeling) appeal to disposition (emotions): how well a proposition ‘fits with’ an individual or community of users; ‘touching the emotions’.

logos: (credibility) reasoning and logic: structure of the design argument, draws together ethos and pathos

Logos and Metaphor

Metaphors operates as a particular way of relating subject and object tin communication, in order to bring about a particular effect in ethos and pathos.

Simply put, metaphor is a way of expressing one thing in terms of another. It is different from simile which infers likeness by way of comparison.

Metaphors is a form of logic that differs from rational, linear logic in the way it relates things.

Bateson (1991) compares metaphorical thought with rational thought.

All men are mortal.

Socrates is a man.

Socrates is mortal.

Metaphorical logic seeks novel meaning to create unfamiliar and new meaning to move a subject.

Grass dies.

Men die.

Men are grass.

Perhaps the follow on could be, and we can cut down men as we do unwanted grass.

Appeals to emotions more than meaning.

Ricoeur (174) suggests that metaphor expresses an inner-dimension to an experience, but then, it also refigures the outer world of that experience.

“The metaphorical twist” says Rocoeur, “is both an event and a meaning.”

The power of metaphor to connect to relate and to transform meaning is directly attributable to its interdependence with the context in which it operates. 

Metaphors is an example of logos in that it structures the content of an argument and the ethos (voice) and pathos (feeling) of that argument towards rhetorical effect.

Metaphor creates joy and delight int eh reader when the reader is able to piece the elements together.

‘Although not so obvious at first glance, the themes of communication and rhetoric in this larger field, exert strong influence on our understanding of all objects made for human use.’ (Buchanan 1989: 4).

‘As with rhetoric the subject matter of design is not determinate; there are ‘alternative resolutions’ and the designers are always dealing ‘with matters of choice, with things that may be other than they are’ (1995, p25)

‘Design ‘products’ are arguments ‘that propose how to lead one’s life.’ (Buchanan 2991: 195-6)

No right or wrong solutions but only those which have a more or less effective argument within their context. We work for and on behalf of others. Which means we must assume a position in regards to how we produce design.

Gui Bonsiepe (1965)

Synthesis between rhetoric and semiotics to describe and analyse advertising

Hanno Ehses (1984)

Synthesis of semiotics as analysis of sign structures and their use in visual messages with rhetoric

A way of construction appropriate messages a working model of concept formation

Rhetorical framework + strategies applied to design practice

Role of designers as ‘facilitators of social action … involved in shaping communication processes as well as the resulting products.

Design and Rhetoric…

Design that is ‘effective )that has an influence and impact on a person’s belief, behaviour, and or action) is a key concern of all designers.

This concern with effectiveness in design leads us to the premise that because of its persuasive aspects, communication design, like all design, can be understood as a rhetorical practice.

Deliberative rhetoric is closely associated with design because both:

- have no subject matter of their own

- are goal orientated; conscious (mindful_ and deliberate (purposeful);

- aim to affect a desired behaviour, attitude, belief, or action’

- address the future;

- are concerned with prospective actions and possibilities that centre on human action and choice, and therefore imply agency.

“Deliberative rhetoric provides an audience with reasons in persuading them to question beliefs as they consider the adoption of a new attitude or course of action. (Buchanan, 1989).

If we are advocating courses of action on behalf of others for others, then what’s our responsibility as designers, as we’re seeking to creating a relationship with other people on behalf of other people?

———

YouTube

https://youtu.be/FeCz5fy02JE

Pathos: emotional response.

Logos: logic and reason. Stats, facts, cost, information. What does it do. How does it do it. 

Ethos: appeal to credibility. Creator of message can be trusted. Experts to associate credibility. Could be simply celebrity.

——

Nike

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/video/2018/sep/04/colin-kaepernick-from-kneeling-quarterback-to-nike-poster-boy-video

https://twitter.com/nike/status/1037388425727332352?lang=en

https://www.forbes.com/sites/willburns/2018/09/04/with-new-kaepernick-ad-what-does-nike-believe-in/#3c54f4941081

https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/why-nikes-30th-anniversary-ad-featuring-colin-kaepernick-is-a-worthwhile-risk-for-the-brand/

GRAP 1102 // Week 04 // Reading // Stuart Hall (2013) Representation

Language & Meaning: Crash Course Philosophy #26 – link

• How do we define “a game”?
• Question of meaning.
• What do they mean?
• How do we know what they mean?
• Who gets to decide?

“How do words — a collection of sounds or symbols — key into the mental concepts that we want to communicate?”

“20th century German philosopher Gottlab Frege helped parse out this difference [what words mean] by drawing a distinction between what he called sense, and reference.”

Reference (noun)

The reference of a word is the object or concept that its meant to designate.

Words such as cat, kitty, mouser, feline, is the physical manifestation of “cat”.

Sense (noun)

The sense of a word is the way in which the words tie us to the object or concept.

But they have difference sense which means kitty might be a small or baby cat while mouser might live in a barn and kill rodents.

Definition

A definition is traditionally understood as whatever meets the conditions for both necessity and sufficiency.

Necessary Condition

What’s needed – what must be present — in order for a thing to be a thing. In order for X to be X.

To be a bachelor you must be unmarried, for eg.

Sufficient Condition

Something that’s enough for X to be X, but its not required for that thing to meet that definition.

Being born ins the US is sufficient to be US citizen but not required as you’re able to become a citizen through other means.

BUT this definition is too rigid.

“Any definition you give, someone’s going to come up with a counterexample — either some game that’s excluded by the definition, or something that the definition includes that not everyone would agree is a game.”

Doesn’t matter. Everyone knows what a game is and we draw example from other examples. So our brain pieces together the concept and we understand a “family resemblance”. 

Word meanings are “cluster groups”. “There’s no one element that everything the cluster has in common, but they all share something with some other members of the group.”

Paradigm and Fringe — everyone agrees on Paradigm BUT there’s a shift in who might agree to the fringe cases.

Meaning is use.

Meaning is tied to community. Communities may not agree.

No-one else can see each others personal meaning though. I don’t know if the colour red is the same as yours but it doesn’t matter.

Words can only refer to the aspect of it which is publicly acceptable to others.

Example – Pop

Mariah Carey calls her followers Lambs.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/22/style/mariah-carey-in-concert.html

Beyoncé Beyhive

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/aug/10/meaning-beyonce-dispatch-inside-the-beyhive

Ariana Grande Arianators

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2017/05/ariana-and-arianators-we-really-are-family

Example – Motorcycle

https://www.thoughtco.com/definitions-of-different-types-of-motorcycles-4122761

https://www.braaapmotorcycles.com/blogs/news/the-difference-cafe-racer-bobber-brat-scrambler-tracker

• Adventure Touring Bikes / Dual Sports
• Choppers
• Cruisers
• Power Cruisers
• Dirt Bikes
• Enduro Bikes
• Motocross Bikes
• Naked Bikes
• Scooters
• Power Scooters
• Sport Bikes
• Super Sports

Then modified and custom bikes fall into their own categories and can come from any of their counterparts.

• Scramblers
• Cafe Racer
• Tracker
• Brat-bob
• Brat
• Chopper
• American Bobber
• European Bobber

Speaker Meaning

What the speaker intends when using a word

Audience Meaning

What the audience understands when hearing the word.

Language is communication, our goal is for the speaker meaning and audience meaning to match up.

———

Philosophy – Language: Meaning and Language

Katie Richie

https://youtu.be/-6hoDNZoV5g

Foundational Meaning — what serves as determiner or foundation of meaning.

Dictionaries classify our descriptive meaning question. We’re asking what it has.

Foundational Meaning what gives a word or utterance meaning.

Internalist answers determine mental or psychological states which are inside a person.

Externalist answers require something outside which determines meaning, such as the object tor specialist definition.

Speaker intentions specify meaning. These account for sounds, marks or images provide meaning based on the account.

An utterance means P if:

1. you come to believe P
2. my audience recognises that I want you to come to believe that P
3. you come to believe P given your recognition that I wanted you to understand P

This would mean the same thing if I restated the same thing to somebody else.

Intention

Meaning depends on the way speakers and writers use it.

Externalists

“Meanings just ain’t in the head!”

1) Knowing the meaning of a term is just being in a psychological state

2) The meaning of an expression determines what things the expression applies to.

“Creature with a kidney”. All creatures which have a kidney.

“Renate” means creature with a kidney. Which is the same.

Thought Experiment

Hypothetical stations that philosophers use to help determine what would make something true and what the conditions for accurately applying the concept are.

Twin Earth theory—can bother almost be referring to the same thing, but are not.

If I say “milk” for example, perhaps I’m referring to milk as it comes from a cow or milk as it comes from a nut or from soy.

———

Representation. ‘The work of representation’. Stuart Hall, 2013

Representation, Meaning and Language

Commonly ‘Representation means using language to say something meaningful about, or to represent, the world meaningfully, to other people.’

‘Representation is an essential part of the process by which meaning is produced and exchanged between members of a culture. It does involve the use of language, of signs and images which stand for or represent things. But this is far from simple or straightforward process.’

Reflective

reflect a meaning which already exists in the world of objects, people and events?

(“Twin Earth thought experiment example)

Intentional

express only what the speaker or writer or painter wants to say, his or her personally intended meaning?

(Joan Miro’s symbolic approach to painting, for example)

Constructionist

Meaning constructed through language.

Constructionist approach has two major variants

1. Semiotic (Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure)
2. Discursive (French philosopher and historian, Michel Foucault)

Representation is ‘the production of meaning through language’.

1. (description) to represent something is to describe or depict it, to call it up in the mind by description or portrayal or imagination to place a likeness of it before us in our mind or in the senses; as, for example, in the sentence, ‘This picture represents the murder of Abel by Cain’.

2. (symbolise) To represent also means to symbolise, stand for, to be a specimen of, or to substitute for; as in the sentence, ‘in Christianity, the cross represents the suffering and crucifixion of Christ’.

The figures in the painting stand in the place of, and at the same time, stand for the story Cain and Abel. Likewise, the cross simply consists of two wooden planks nailed together; but in the context of Christian belief and teaching, it taken on, symbolises or comes to stand for a wider set of meanings about crucifixion of the Son of God, and this is a concept we can’t into words and pictures.

‘… give meaning to things through language.’

‘You can only think with the concept of the glass. As the linguists are fond of saying, “Dogs bark. But the concept of “dog” cannot bark or bite.’ Because it is not the thing itself, we are only using words to represent the thing which we are intending. Only the thing which we are representing can actually doing the barking or biting.

‘you can only speak with the word for glass – GLASS – which is the linguistic sign which we use in English to refer to objects out of which you drink water.’

Definition

‘Representation is the production of meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events.

1. real world (objects, people, events)

2. imaginary world (fictional objects, people, events, concepts)

Two Systems of Representation

1. Mental representations we carry around in our head

Meaning depend son the system of concepts and images formed in our thoughts which can stand for or ‘represent’ the world, enabling us to refer to things both inside and outside our heads.

Easy for things like people and objects. Difficult for concepts like war, death, friendship, love, relationship. Also, things we’ve never seen such as angle,s mermaids, God, Devil, Heaven, Hell, and fictional characters.

System because ‘consists not of individual concepts, but of different ways of organising, clustering, arranging and classifying concepts, and of establishing complex relations between them.’

In regards to birds and planes and the similarities and differences between them ‘…mixing and matching of relations between concepts to form complex ideas and thoughts is possible because our concepts are arranged into different classifying systems.’ 

— flying / not flying

— natural / man-made

‘Meaning depends on the relationship between things in the world — people, objects and events, real or fictional — and the conceptual system, which can operate as mental representations of them.’

Shared culture  provides us the ability to interpret these complex systems within the same framework, as ‘each of us probably does understand and interpret the world in a unique and individual way. However, we are bale to communicate because we share broadly the same conceptual maps and thus make sense of or interpret the wold in roughly similar ways.’ We are ‘… able to build up a shared culture of meanings and thus construct a social world which we inhabit together. That is why “culture” is sometimes defined in terms of “shared meanings or shared conceptual maps” (see Du Gay et al. 1997).

2. Language provides a ‘shared conceptual map’ which may translate ‘common language, so that we can correlate our concepts and ideas with certain written words, spoken sounds or visual images.’

Signs are these things which carry meaning. They ‘stand for or represent the concepts and conceptual relations between them which we carry around in our heads’. They ‘make up the meaning-systems of our culture.’

Language incorporates a wide range of things which we understand to express meaning and communicate thoughts including: spoken, written, visual, hand signs, facial expression, digital and electronic transmissions, codes, traffic lights, music, etc. ‘Any sound word, image or object which functions as a sign, and is organised with other signs into a system which is capable of carrying and expressing meaning is, from this point of view, “a language”.’ This meaning is linguistic turn.

So, two systems of representation. 1) a system for concepts and conceptual maps 2) corresponding signs arranged into language systems which represent these concepts. ‘The relation between “things”, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call “representation”’.

Language and Representation

‘Visual signs and images, even when they bear a close resemblance to the things to which they refer, are still signs: they carry meaning and thus have to be interpreted.’ Interpretation requires access to both the conceptual map and the language to decode them.

1. Iconic are visuals signs which resemble the thing to which they refer

2. Indexical signs are written or spoken and bear no direct resemblance. These are also arbitrary as it doesn’t matter particularly what sign is used only that we agree on its use.

‘It is we who fix the meaning so firmly that, after a while, it comes to seem natural and inevitable. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation.’

Culture is defined ‘in terms of these shared conceptual maps, shared language systems and the codes which govern the relationships of translation between them.’ Codes ‘fix the relationships between concepts and signs. They stabilise meaning within different languages and cultures.’ 

Codes ‘make it possible for us to speak and to hear intelligibly, and establish the translatability between our concepts and our languages which enables meaning to pass from speaker to hearer and be effectively communicated within a culture.’

Example might be to learn the various words used within a culture to express meaning but you have to learn how to navigate with them effectively to get the nuance of their use.

However, if meaning is not fixed to a specific concept out there in the real world then its meaning can shift culturally depending on use. For example, ‘gay’ may mean being happy or it may mean homosexual. ‘Wicked’ may mean terrible or evil or it might mean cool, similar to the use of ‘deadly’ within indigenous communities.

‘Social and linguistic conventions do change over time. In the language of modern managerialism, what we used to call ’students’, ‘clients’, ‘patients’ and ‘passengers’ have all become ‘customers’. 

Theories of Representation

1. Reflective (or mimetic) approach where meaning lies within the object, person, idea or event in the real world and language functions like a mirror to reflect the meaning as it exists. However, our description is only a sign standing in for the real thing, it is not the real thing itself.

2. intentional approach places meaning with the speaker or author. Words mean what the author intends they should mean. However this is flawed as ‘we cannot be the sole or unique source of meanings in language, since that would mean that we could express ourselves in entirely private languages.’ And so, ‘our private intended meanings, however personal to us, have to enter into the rules, codes and conventions of language to be shared and understood.’

3. Constructionist approach ‘acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems — concepts and signs.’ Do not confuse the material world with symbolic practice and processes. Language system conveys meaning as determined by systems of culture and objects and people.

‘Representation is the production of meaning through language. In representation, constructionists argue, we use signs, organised into languages of different kinds, to communicate meaningfully with others. Languages can use signs to symbolise, stand for or reference objects, people and events int eh so-called ‘real’ world. But they can also reference imaginary things and fantasy world or abstract ideas which re not in any obvious sense part of our material world… meaning is produced within language, in and through various representational systems which, for convenience, we call ‘languages’. Meaning if produced by the practice, the ‘work’, of representation. It is constructed through signifying — i.e. meaning-producing — practices.’

1. We have a concept of something for which we know its ‘meaning’ but we need a system of representation, or language and codes, which allow us to translate this meaning and transmit it, which is in turn decoded and understood.

This is why the words which we use and how we use them are incredibly important. Despite what some people might say.

Saussure’s Legacy

A sign is;

1. Signifier. The form (the actual word, image, photo, etc.)

2. Signified. Idea or Concept in your head.

Both are required to produce meaning.

‘…the sign is the union of a form which signifies (signifier) … and an idea signified (signified). Though we may speak … as if they are separate entities, they exist only as components of the sign … [which is] the central fact of language’ (Culler, 1976, p19)

Signs do not exist in relation to something but in contrast to it according to the system. We define things by which they are not.

A ‘language consists of signifiers, button over to produce meaning, the signifiers have to be organised into a “system of differences”. It is the differences between signifiers which signify.’ These relations are fixed by our cultural codes but are not permanent. This shift equates with our cultural shift, including historic moments.

We engage with an active process of interpretation to read, interpret and understand the sign.

“… it is not a ‘closed’ system which can be reduced to its formal elements. Since it is constantly changing, it is by definition open-ended.’

Barthes

Denotation (description)

Connotation (wider level of cultural understanding and concepts)

———

Bliss child says creature, night, consumes, blood.

GRAP 2030 // Week 03 // Reading // Kimbell (2011)

Discusses the origins of design thinking through three main accounts.

1. design thinking as a cognitive style
2. general thinking of design
3. resource for organisations

Counter claims undermining design thinking

1. dualism between thinking and knowing and acting
2. ignores diversity of designers' practices and institutions historically situated
3. privileges the designer as the main design agent

This paper "... proposes that attending to the situated, embodied routines of designers and others offers a useful way to rethink design thinking."

"Concepts and language that used to be associated with designers now enter the specialist areas: policymakers are told that public services shoudl be more user-centered (Parker and Heapy 2006); businesses engage with customers by offering new meanings for things (Verganti 2009); the US Army is considering the role of design in warfare (School of Advanced Military Studies n.d.). Professional design, in particular design as practiced withint eh sutdio-based tradition of many art shcools, is taking a new place on the world stage."

She states there's a shift in design as design to design as design thinking. A shift from product to process, "design itself is being remade (Tonkinwise 2010). Design as design thinking should provide more than mere design."

She states that "design thinking may have failed" but doesn't provide much support for this assertation other than a quick and dismissive "not brought about a happy synthesis...some of its [design thinking] key proponents are beginning to question design thinking, even calling it a 'failed experiment' (Nussbaum 2011)." Providing a single reference is not a supported position.

Designer as Cultural Interpreter

Design thinking provided "a response to the ebbs and flows of a global, mediatized economy of signs and artifacts; in this context, professional designers play increasingly important roles, less as makers of forms and more as cultural intermediaries (Julier 2008) or as the “glue” in multidisciplinary teams (Kelley and VanPatter 2005)."

"They are interpters of changes inc ulture who then create new kinds of cultural form."

What is a designer?

They are seen as using an iterative process that moves from generating insights about end users, to idea generation and testing, to implementation. Their visual artifacts and prototypes help multidisciplinary teams work together. They ask “what if?” questions to imagine future scenarios rather than accepting the way things are done now. With their creative ways of solving problems, the argument goes, designers can turn their hands to nearly anything.

1. 'new spirit' of capitalism "captures some of the energy in the shift from hierarchies to networks and from bureaucratic discipline to team-work and multi-skilling, as capitalism absorbed its critiques and remade itself as offering managers both autonomy and security."
2. importance of the economy of signs that ignore state borders and in which the value of a commodity cannot be separated from its symbolic value (Lash and Urry 1994). A sophisticated effort to engage diverse audiences or stakeholders in establishing the meaning of these signs marks
3. rise of the 'creative class' — you might also now refer to this as the gig economy, which is not necessarily considered a fantastic thing for the creatives themselves. Here, "work and professional identities are caught up in creating meaningful new forms. For Florida the word “creative” is not just reserved for designers, musicians, and visual artists but also computer programmers and opinion-makers such as columnists. These professionals find meaning in work which is characterized by flexibility, autonomy, and creativity and which blurs their professional and personal lives, as they move across national borders without being anchored to industrial modes of production and consumption."
4. the role of business schools as centers of resarch and education.

Kimbell criticises the focus of design thinking as centering on a single design consultancy, IDEA, which negates the breadth of design practice.

Two contradictory pereceptions of design thinking:

1. Alexander's thesis states 'designers give form to things; they are privileged makers whose work is centrally concerned with materiality. This is the tradition of craft and professional design fields that create specific kinds of objects, from furniture, to buildings, to clothing.'
2. Simon suggests 'designers' work is abstract; their job is to create a desired state of affairs. This way of thinking baout deisng is the core of all professions, not just hte work of engineers and designers of artifacts.'

Neither emphasises design thikning.

• Peter Rowe (1987) argues 'design professionals have an episodic way of approaching their work, they rely on hunches and presuppoitions, not just facts...the nature of problem-solving process itself shapes the solution.'
• Nigel Cross prefers 'designerly ways of knowing' with 'problem solving as solution-focused as they tackle ill-defined problems and situates this within a larger argument about design as a coherent discipline of study distinct form the sciences and the humanities.'
• Bryan Lawson (1997) ' the practice of designing ina  context of multiple restraints'.
• Nigel Cross and Kees Dorst (2001) say 'problems and solutions co-evolve'.
• Cross (2006) 'designers treat all problems as ill-defined, even if they are not.'
• Cross (1982) and Dorst (2010) suggest 'abductive reasoning' (develop a set of possible solutions and propose which might be most suitable) and 'designers construct designs that transcend or connect paradoxes.

Buchanan (1992) shifts theory from craft and production to design thinking which 'could be applied to nearly anything, whether a tangible object or intangible system.' He defines four orders of design which designers address and is less concerned 'with individual designers and how they design, but rather seeks to define design's role in the world':

1. signs
2. things
3. actions
4. thoughts

Design Thinking: De-politicizing Manegerial Practice

Sam Ladner (2009) 'design is attractice to management because it is a de-politicized version of the well known socio-cultural critique of managerial practices'.

• Tim Brown (IDEO)
• Roger Martin (Dean of Rotman School of Managemet in Toronto)

Both present 'a way to balance organiszational tensions between exploration and exploitation or as a loosley-structured organizational process that stimulates inonoveation' but which 'do not draw extensively on research in either design studies or management and organization studies.' Kimbell is critical of their lack of research-based writing.

According to Kimbell, Brown claims that 'design thinkers know there is no right answer to a problem. Rather, he argues, through following non-linear, iterative design process he calls inspiration, ideation, and implementation, the design process can convert problems into opportunities.'

How do inspiration, ideation and implementation tie into our concepts of design process?

Brown suggestions successful design exists between three concerns but which introduce a paradox:

1. what is desireably from the users perspective?
2. what is technically feasible?
3. what is commercially viable for the organization?

Paradoxically, designers interpret what users "need" by drawing on ethnographically-inspired techniques but which are not drawn directly from social science theory and politics to shape their findings. Kimbell says, 'design thinking fails to reference wider theories of the social and misses opportunities to illuminate the contextinto which the designer is intervening'.

Lime scooters.

Martin says design thinking helps management 'to shift from choosing between alternatives to helping them generate entirely new concepts...combining abductive, as well as inductive and deductive, reasoning.'

Finding a better balance between exploration and exploitation, and betwen abductive as well as inductive and deductive reasoning, is...design thinking.

Summary

 ...design thinking has been used to characterize what individual designers know, and how they approac and make sense of their own work, as well as how they actually do it.

Definitions have shifted from the design of things to concerning action and systems then to an approach for business and social innovation. However, 'there is still no clear description of design thinking.'

• On what principles is it based?
• How different is it to other kinds of professional knowledge?
• Do all designers exhibit it?
• What are its effects within the worlds where design takes place?
• How can it be taught? 

Dualism of approach to research

1. focus on individual designer ignores the world within which the designer works
2. study of a process describes what happened while designing a particular object but do not 'share the close attentiveness paid ot the role of artifacts found in material culture approaches influenced by anthropology, nor do they situate their accounts of design within larger historical frameworks.'

Restraints

In class we discussed the concept of restraints within a design context through the use of localisation examples using the Star Wars: The Force Awakens posters between US and Chinese markets and Ratchet and Clank between the US and Japanese markets. Also see the Italian posters for Twelve Years a Slave, where the lead actor Chiwetel Ejiofor, who is black, was replaced by two white actors in minor roles, Brad Pitt and Michael Fassbender.

To discuss the differences and need for designers to solve problems specific to a culture, we discussed Lime Scooters and Ofo within Australian markets. Lime Scooters help solve a range of transportation issues including:

• faster pedestrian navigation
• park anywhere
• cheap cost of rental
• mobility for those who may have issues with it
• fun

However, the scooters also cause issues such as:

• taking up space on the side walk when parked
• challenging the idea of ownership to rental
• poor education and use by local population
• use of previously existing pedestrian spaces
• tech issues (such as braking)

GRAP 2030 // Week 03 // Video // Design & Thinking

Design and Thinking. Muris Media, 2012. Accessed March 19, 2019.

Watch the following documentary, Design Thinking (2012) and consider, and it in the context of this week’s reading.

• In what ways do designers look, see and explore the world differently, and as part of their creative process?
• What kind of problems can designers address, how can design thinking change material, social, behavioural, cultural and environmental problems?
• This documentary features designers, educators, businessmen and social change-makers around the world to discuss what they have in common when facing ambiguous challenges.
• What is design thinking?
• How is it applied inside and outside of traditional design pathways?

Intro

Big problems in the world today.

How does the design mind have the ability to creatively solve the big problems in the world today with human solutions?

"Ambiguous problem—you don't know what you don't know. There's no one path."

Complex problem is playing chess, ambiguous problem is inviting inlaws over for dinner.

Different possible alternatives.

"What's their higher calling? Their higher purpose? How that business, government, organisation can respond to that higher calling."

Design Thinking

Haven't heard of it.

Redesigning the savings experience.

Multi disciplinary thinking.

"Step by step process—'oh, that's where I get it. Oh, that's where I synthesise ideas. THat's where I build prototypes and show other people'".

You're not born with creative genes—its practice.

Tim Brown, CEO Ideo

Definition of design thinking "... applying the methodologies and approaches of design and designers to a broader set of issues and problems as a society."

David Kelley

Founder, Standford D. School and IDEO

You must have passion for something if you're going to get involved in it.

"That's one way to make something important [have it given by family members]."

As he goes through objects on his shelf he says, this was given, this is from another country, I used this every day to warm my feet, these have history.

This discusses the way in which we become attached to objects, a psychological bond which is human and not necessarily derived from the product itself. Marie Kondo's philosophy is Governed by Shintoism which says that all things have a spirit and after 100 years even inanimate objects may take on a life of their own and earn a spirit.

100 ideas in ten minutes.

Paul Pangaro

CTO, Cybernetic Lifestyles.com

"... in order to distinguish between what others think of as design which is usually just the design to the thinking behind, thinking you do first, then you make... and the processes, where you begin from where the user is and understand human needs through a kind of ethnography and observation.then to brainstorm and diverge and understand what all the possibilities might be. Then to prototype and to improve the prototype through iteration."

This description helps to reflect the various stages of the design cycle as previously mentioned in other lectures.

"Seeing something we want to make better, then designing it. But its up to that first conversation to begin questioning. Its the design covnversation's responsibilty to diagnose.

Jon Pittman

VP Corporate Strategy, Autodesk

"If nature didn't make it, an Autodesk customer probably did." This ties directly back into the idea that design is anything not existing within the natural world.

"3D printing provides methods for creating objects which we could never have created in the real world," he says while holding up various objects on a table.

George Beylerian

Founder, Material Connexion

Over 6000 materials in databank.

"It is still questionable what is good design. But also big subject if you want to discuss what good design means."

Sara Beckman

Faculty Director, Product Management Program at Haas School of Business

"If I asked you to build me a bridge, what would you ? If you built the bridge you could build that cantilever bridge or a suspension bridge or right, a whole different kinds of bridges. But if you asked m why and I say to get across this body of water, right, then what solutions might you come up with. A Boat. Swimming. Give me a wet suit. A tunnel. An airplane, right? Oh, and the bridge. So by asking why I've no completely reframed what it is, right?"

"Now I say, Oh, I have to get a message to the other side. I don't have to go to the other side right?"

Why is a tougher question to answer but provides a better answer from which to work with. Btu asking "why?" can be seen as trouble-making. Because sometimes what the client wants is not what they need. Remember that original quote by Denys Lasdun in Nigel Cross?

"Our job is ot give the client, on time and cost, not what he wants, but what he never dreamed he wanted; and when he gets it he recognises it as something he wanted all the time."

Dan Formosa
Co-Founder, Smart Design
Qualitavely and QUantitavely where responses can be measured across different ethnographies.
"We want to design for as many people as possible, its about eliminating segregation."

Rapid Prototyping provides freedom to try and create and to figure out does it work.

It doesn't matter if you have a bad design provided that provides the stage from which to get to good design.

Bill Moggridge
Director, The Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum

"So the design output from design thinking, the idea of making a creative leaps in order to come up with a solution. THe idea of representing those leaps with prototypes or renderings or some form of communicating device. The idea of choosing between them and then going forward and developing concepts has alowed people to not just be problem solvers, using explicity thinking. But also be problem solvers using tacit knowledge. Using the learning by doing. And finding taht they come yup with solutions because they build things. They're making things. They're coming up with solutions using intuition." 

GRAP 2030 // Week 02 // Class Notes

Design for the Real World by Victor Papanek (great reference)

Class Discussion

• Does the process diagram reflect your own practice to date?

• What is play?

• How do you think you can make space to be creative?

• Do you listen to music while you draw or make things?

• How much effect does external stimulation have on your own creative process?

• Do you ever try to do something and feel “rusty” or “out of practice”?

• What is a “creative block” and how can you overcome it?

• What is curiosity?

• Creative focus? The need to work to earn a living. How does this affect creativity.

• Think about the concept of the "creative leap" and try to redefine this term in your own words?

• Does the concept of "design intuition" ring true or is this perhaps about experience?

‘Anything that isn’t a simple, untouched piece of nature has been designed by someone.’
‘You cannot hold a design in your hand. It is not a thing. It is a system, a process, a way of thinking.’

1. Resolve ill-defined problems

1. Adopt solution focussed strategy rather than problem-focused strategy

1. Through employing adductive reasons

1. Abductive reasoning means we develop a set of possible solutions and propose which might be most suitable. It’s “maybe”.

1. Different form deduction where something “must be” and induction where something “is” operative.

1. We use nonverbal, graphic, spatial modelling media to communicate solutions for production

• What action is desired? What do I want the audience to do or how do I want them to respond?

• What does the audience need to know to respond in the desired way?

• What is the best way to facilitate desired response?

• What will it say? What will it be? What will it look like?

Why are these questions so important? Look back at Nigel Cross who quotes Denys Lasdun "Our job is ot give the client, on time and cost, not what he wants, but what he never dreamed he wanted; and when he gets it he recognises it as something he wanted all the time." What is the thing that you're providing the client? They've asked for a poster but is it really a website they need? Or a flyer?
‘The quality of … design effort profoundly affects our quality of life. The ability of … designers to produce effective, efficient, imaginative and stimulating design is therefore important to all of us.’ Cross, 2011 p4
x

Chris Thornton Lecture

Design thinking and process

Professional problem solvers, interpreters, and purposeful creators for human beings

– Nigel Cross, 2011 p4

Objects design us as we design then.

Design = object?

Design is not a thing. Design is the process of creation by addressing an image.

Design = Process

Action, doing, thinking. A process of responding to a problem. A set of parameters for a specific process. How they interact, learn, think and do.

What is design process?

Process diagram.

BUT this is not a linear process from start to finish. It involves exploration.

Design Process attempts to 

Transformation

“a skilled professional communicator who mediates between an expert and the audience. The transformers job is to put the experts message in a form the reader can understand, and to look after the reader’s interest in general.”

Gather message > designer mediates message > audience receives message though this is never so clearly defined. Every individual audience member will interpret the message differently. The designer must understand both perspectives to ensure clear understanding.

Questions

It is a process. A system. A way of thinking.

What tools do we use? Design must draw on all other fields and disciplines all the time in order to discover new things. Critical reflective thinking and creativity are imperative.

What is a “creative leap”?

Does the “creative leap” exist?

No, its a skill that can be taught and developed. And, if you treat design as a working process that you understand it can help to generate new ideas and solutions based on experience to problems which feel difficult or hard to get your head around. In other words, with a strong process and with enough work a designer should be able to come up with new and interesting solutions to pre-existing problems.

Hard work is involved in design proposals.

Less of a creative leap and more like a bridge, or a tipping point which requires enough load to find the correct perspective.

What is playfulness? How have you heard it described? What role does “play” have in a society?

Design Intelligence (active decision making)

– arrange furniture

– get dressed

– combine ingredients when cooking, a personal take on a recipe

Craft based societies design was not separate from the development itself. Both beautiful and functional. “No sketch or plan” with information passed on with master and apprentice relationship. Although you could argue that this prior knowledge is perhaps a sketch of the object ,though a mental one.

Intelligence is the ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills

This is a narrow interpretation of intelligence

Gardner suggests music, linguistic, bodily kinaesthetic, logical mathematical, spatial, interpersonal, interpersonal, naturalist, existential. Perhaps design, then creativity.

Phillippe Stark (rough transcript with emphasis added)

You have to be a little sick, a little artist, and dream a lot, and if you’re lucky you can dream how you serve to exists, and you can dream how you can serve your society, then its just work to produce more to produce less. And to figure out where you’re useful. Its about generosity. How do I help my friends to have a better life. Its about the effect about the project and its effect ton the society. How can I speak about the future, equality, better quality and cheaper. Help my friends is what I do. A hotel, rocket, plane, lemon squeezer. All the same things.

(If I reflect on photography, I see many meaningless and unfulfilling images int he world. Think about scrawling through Instagram—what images do you stop on, what's most relevant, what teaches you something, what do you empathise with, what is most important to you personally and professionally? Are you filled with love for the things you see or do they spark jealousy? You either need to shift your mindset or shift your personal approach to using the media. As Lou said, "why do you follow them if they make you sad? Just unfollow them. Make Instagram a happy place.")

Does the project bring something new or disruptive. (Here, he's looking for something that will change a culture. Think on Jonathon Baldwin 'Culture: The Theory' where he discusses mainstream culture, sub-culture and popular culture. All of Stark's discussions point that he has a desire to make change for the good of all people by subverting what we understand of our present society. "We need to invent the next society.") Evolution garbage. This will stop when the sun will explode. Life is framed across 8 million years. We might not meet the end. Nobody needs to be a genius but everybody must work on the scenario of evolution. We have a duty to bring anything we can to that. Design doesn’t save life but it might help life. But its obsolete. But I try to make the best possible I can do. And I want to push the limit of the job with honesty, creativity and truth and not the needs created by marketing and advertising. We need to invent the next society.

Our work is obsolete. Some people will die during this interview. They have no water, bad water, too much water. We have the object to save life immediately. But I cannot save life. And I feel bad about that. My job has changed. I’m not stupid. I take my tool, my job and turn it to make it better, more respectable, more important.

All work was done with respect which gives it longevity. Which is why the projects succeed 20 or 30 years ago. But we need to make products today which are not within my tools. (This is an interesting statement—he actively acknowledges that what he knows and understands is not the finished product. Perhaps he's discussing new materials, new techniques, new psychology, perhaps an advocate for people from other fields to join the creative profession in order to make positive change.)

Multi-sickness. Creativity is management of concentration. (Reiterating here Csikszentmihalyi (1996) that "how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty. In too many cases, attention is restricted by external necessity" and his discussion of the flow state.) But you must pay the price. You must live like a monk. Don’t watch television. You must be alone with yourself. I can make my job, dreaming, 12–13 hours a day. This is the only way to bring disruptive, to bring fresh ideas. But if you're around others you’ll always repeat what you’ve seen and heard. When you try to understand you see all the issues around you. Everyday there is a new questions and perhaps I can try to understand it.

(Again thinking on Csikszentmihalyi "... often the obstacles are internal. In a person concerned with protecting his or her self, the practically all the attention is invested in monitoring threats to the ego." — which reminds me of Ian Anderson of the The Design Republic's discussion last night (7 march 2017 at Mercury Cinema) in which he discusses "Kill Your Self" t-shirt campaign. He said it wasn't meant in a negative light but that rather instead of preening and primping oneself to make sure we "look our best" in front of the mirror, instead we get over it and move on with more important things in life. We kill the ego in order to gain control of our lives.")

First you have to know that you need to manage your concentration. You must agree to pay the price. You live in your project and in abstraction but not your life. You live in a great cloud. Perhaps there is a different structure of the brain which gives more possibility for creativity. I see people working and working well, they build a structure, they go from A to B to C. And they have good researcher. I am not able to go from A to B to C to D. It’s impossible. My brain explode. I try to describe process only. If this person can go from A to B to C to D I go from A to Z completely without in between and maybe this is just me.

I know very few people who have the same process. I know one or two but they have their own projects. But no, I work with the least people possible and only with people I love. The respect of love is the key to everything. Because I hope to love and love us. The love is the permanent magic K. I love my wife. I speak 98% and the others I speak because I love.

I don’t know a lot of designer. I’m sure there are lots of nice people. But maybe lichen stein, gaudi, plato. All philosophers.

2 types of creativity. Idea of yourself. And idea of question. Different process. Creativity needs organisation. A lot in your life and in your brain. A lot of work to receive the idea, then to check the idea. To check if its the right idea. I might get the idea in 2 minutes, or 5 hours, or 2 days. But then I might spend 7 years to check the idea. I know immediately what I want but then I have to go through the process to check.

Why not dancing thinking, design thinking, creative thinking. Its so structural as part of human being. We exist to create, with our creativity.

Here lies one who tried to help.

First, I don’t deserve more. The system is beautiful. But I am just a small part of it. I am not a genius. I am a below.

———

Seung Chan Lim

No background in art. First assignment to properly fold paper. Go fold something. She didn’t know what to fold so she just started trying to see what would happen. He lacked humility. Humility required to work through the process and to not let anyone let you know you’re crazy. Acting is having the courage to tell your story. The experience which lies at the foundation of your performance is your experience, though the character and the story might not be yours. Develop empathy with your materials or an imaginary character. 

———

Csiksgentmihalyi (1996)

“how much uncommitted attention they have left over to deal with novelty.”

“There are real limits to how many thing sa person can attend to at the same time, and when survival needs require all of one’s attention, none is left over for being creative.”

“Curiosity is like a constant beam that highlights and invests with interest anything within range.” You could argue that curiosity also helps keep us young and fresh and inquisitive such as learning something new and becoming excited about it into old age.

“Creativity within a domain often goes hand in hand with conformity in the rest of life.” In other words, the older we get and the more time poor we are the less time we have to invest in things which we find interesting, or the less time to explore unique opportunities. OR perhaps we invest too much energy in places where we’re unable to create or which sap us of creative energy.

For example, I used to play video games but I realised that for lal the playing and the experience I was having I washable to convert that inspiration into activity because I would keep playing and lose the spark to develop.

There’s also another issue with time in that the things I love doing, creating, drawing, painting, dancing, etc. prohibit me from running my business or at least I FEEL they prohibit me from running my business. This in turn means the things I love to do for passion are set aside for things which might earn me a living. BUT in practice the opposite is true—the more I explore things I love, share them and act passionately the more work I find in those areas and I’m able to survive off the things I love—until my passions change and shift of course!

try to be surprised by something every day

cultivate a flow state in everyday life

issues with instant gratification and consumption

anything to keep our mind from wandering to negative thoughts

However, if we learn to enjoy our latent creativity or harness it we’re able to avoid depression and increase our capacity to relate to the world. 

wake up in the morning with a specific goal to look forward to

if you do it well it becomes enjoyable

once you enjoy something you need to increase its complexity and mastery. how deep can you learn to enjoy the act of something?

develop a sense of community

take charge of your schedule

make time for reflection and relaxation (if I don’t have enough work I haven’t been out of the house enough)

shape your space

do more of what you love and less of what you hate