Thesis mid-term critique- thoughts and comments

Here are my notes about the mid-term critique. In order to help myself digest all the critiques, I wrote them down here.

From Hugh Dubberly:

Aware other important luminaries:

Your current collection of research on earlier work is a good start, but many important pieces are missing. (One problem may be that the field is actually quite large. However, that’s what would make a summary very useful.)

Here’s a list of important related work that I recommend looking at and adding to your list (diagram 1):

– Gowin and Novak, Learning How to Learn — This is an essential book on concept mapping. It’s important to distinguish concept representation (and sharing) from the concepts themselves. Concept mapping is a method of representing concepts; it’s easy to teach and learn and quite powerful. All designers should learn it.

 

– Don Norman, “Design as Communication” — Norman talks about “the system image”. His model is very important. See http://www.jnd.org/images/ConceptualModel.jpg

and

     Here’s the full article:

     http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/design_as_communicat.html

     There’s also a Chinese language version:

     http://uigarden.net/chinese/opinion.php/2004/12/29/yu_she_ji_dui_hua

– Ted Nelson (who you met when he came to class) talks about interaction design as creating conceptual structures. He has invented some words. “Xanalogical structure” and “virtuality”.

     See “ZXinternals”: http://xanadu.com/zigzag/fw99/zxInternals.html

– Douglas Engelbart, On the Augmentation of Human Intellect — Engelbart talks about Concept Structuring. See http://www.1962paper.org/web.html

“Entailment” from Gordon Pask.

From Hugh Dubberly’s email:

Conversation Theory is the work of Gordon Pask. He proposed that the unit of thought is an “entailment” — a set of concepts or terms that each implies or “entails” the others. “Compass + Plane + Circle” is a simple example. A term may be in more than one entailment; thus entailments are connected in meshes. This idea is similar to modern notions of knowledge graphs. It’s also similar to Umberto Eco’s concept of “unlimited semiosis”. It’s also similar to Vannevar Bush’s idea of linked trails in the mind. And of course, it’s similar to Ted Nelson’s idea of hypertext.

Entailment, in my understanding, is one concept within another concept. For example, the pen bag includes pens inside. It is the basic of conceptual model. But conceptual model should be goal oriented, it contains flows of how to achieve the goals.

Design is a branch of rhetoric

(Rhetoric: the art of effective or persuasive speaking pr writing, especially the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques)

From Hugh Dubberly’s email:

 Richard Buchanan has suggested that design is a branch of rhetoric — that the product of designing IS an argument. Of course, an argument is a type of conceptual structure. See “Declaration by Design: Rhetoric, Argument, and Demonstration in Design Practice,” http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511524?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

An extension of the idea that design is argument or rhetoric is that design is a form of learning. Building and defending an argument is a learning process. This takes us right back to Gowin and Novak and to Susan Star. Please also see:

– Hugh Dubberly et al., “The Analysis-Synthesis Bridge Model”, at http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/ddo_interactions_bridgemodel.pdf

and

– Hugh Dubberly et al., “Design as Learning — or ‘Knowledge Creation’ — the SECI Model”, at http://www.dubberly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Dubberly_Design-as-learning.pdf

Three elements of a design argument are applicable here; they involve interrelated qualities of technological reasoning, character, and emotion, all of which provide the substance and form of design communication. Designers draw on all three elements to some degree in every design argument, sometimes blending them with greatsubtlety in aproduct. Nevertheless, these elements may be analytically distinguished to reveal the different resources that are availablefor persuasion.

The first element, technological reasoning, is the logos of design. It provides the backbone of a design argument, much as chains of formal or informal reasoning provide the core of communication and persuasion in language. In essence, the problem of technological reasoning in design is the way the designer manipulates materials and processes to solve practical problems of human activity. Products are persuasive in this mode when, in addressing real needs, they meet those needs in a reasonable, expedient way. Technological reasoning is based, in part, on an understanding of natural and scientific principles that serve as premises for the construction of objects for use. It is also based on premises drawn from human circumstances, that is, from the attitudes and values of potential users and the physical conditions of actualuse.

From the staff panel:

Interview many more people with diverse backgrounds. 20 people is the minimum amount of interviews.

I am agree that diversity is very important on discover users’ mental model, during the design process. However, right now, more interviews will lead me to a more complex situation. The thing I need to figure out right now is what to discover during the interview, and what questions to ask. I am not clear about it right now. I want to come back to myself and talk to myself a little while to find out what are my mental models.

Test the methodology with designers

Yeah, totally agree. But it is not the right time right now. If I can’t persuade myself, I can not persuade others.

Why the model methodology is important in design?

It is very hard to explain the importance of conceptual model here, right now. There should be better way to explain it later after I convince myself on how to do the conceptual model.

Make something, and design something as soon as possible.

Aha, it is a very interesting question, which is related to a broader question: What is design?   We can’t say that architects are not designing unless they actually build the buildings. No,no, they made models and prototypes. OK, so designers are mainly making prototypes. What are prototypes used for? They are used for communication. (which is related to Don Norman’s aricle  “Design as Communication”) I really love making things and design things, but I don’t, any more, just make random decisions in designs.