OBSERVATION – DOCUMENTATION – ANALYSIS – REFLECTION-EVALUATION - ADAPTATION

 The designer’s practice is communicating designer’s intent to the outside world by presenting output that created by the designer.

The process of practice, illustrated in this diagram is rather one directional; it is performed throughout one’s life span of commitment in design practice. However, the whole process of practice is consisted with several sessions of ideas and making, which is red inner circle of this diagram; it represents the embodiment of designer’s idea through fabrication and development of format by utilizing affordance that is available to the designer.

 The grey circle, a system of observation – documentation – analysis – reflection – evaluation – adaptation, is an embodied and articulated abstraction of reflection of the overall practice. An intent of the designer is the core effector that shapes the modes of output and it’s process of making, thus the observation – documentation – analysis – reflection – evaluation – adaptation –system will be influenced by the context of the intent, yet the system is orbiting around the whole path of the designer’s practice and constantly influencing the intent and growing along with the designer’s practice.  

We also have discussed about the system of designing process. It is begins with a designer’s hand and tools then assembled with contents and concluded as a format as a final outcome. Contents are divided into two groups. Some contents such as ink, code, sound, light, etc. are raw and unrefined resources. (I would rather use term resources rather than materials because designers utilize non-material resources such as information or light to shape their ideas). Texts, video or audio are pre-formed contents. The outcome of design process is format. The designer’s idea is finally embodied as format, which can be expressed through texture, shape, temporality, behavior and so on. Some designers even create contents for themselves; In this case the outcome will have more distinctive characteristics comparing to others.

Personally, the most interesting topic from the last discussion was about the meaning of creative process. I think most designers not only design their outcome but also design their own creative process by facing their work. I’m definitely not a very creative person, but I often get inspired by my brainstorming sketches and storyboards that I created during my creative process; they suggest alternatives and even answers. The history of creative process of an artist is critical based on whether the outcome turns out good or bad. Most of all creative works are produced through at least several months of enduring period of trial and error. During that period, each designer cumulates his or her own experience of history of making process; it contains precious information of histories built through the beginning to the end of their creative process. For example, when we see a photo of Ray Eams work desk, we clearly notice that there is some kind of “organized mass” is developed in that photo. It might looks disorganized at a first glance, however those numerous piles of files, photos and magazine clippings are systematically organized by the designer who is sitting in front of that desk, brain storming and crafting for several hours almost everyday. This systemized chaos contains and remembers a history of the designer’s creative process because they were built and developed by the designer from the beginning when she started to work at that particular desk and it is naturally organized according to her working habits and routines through several years. Yet, later on it is providing collected information to the designer whenever she need. The interaction between artists and the revaluation of their creative process keeps nourishing the overall process of making, because those records of history can be utilized for the future projects as a guideline or inspiration.

Contents

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1. 1 Overview
2. 2 How Designers Work – Areas of Interest
3. 2.1 Focus on Meaning Making
4. 2.2 Designers operate in two different modes: Making Ideas and Making Bits
5. 2.3 Design Process: Hand -> Tool -> Content -> Format
6. 2.4 Gestures of Expression
7. 3 Our Approach to a Taxonomy of Affordance
8. 3.1 Goals for a taxonomy
9. 3.2 Focus on Meaning Making Affordances
10. 3.3 What kinds of affordances should we look at?
11. 3.4 Format of the Taxonomy
12. 4 Prototype Directions
13. 4.1 Tools for Making Ideas

Overview

We covered a lot of ground in the first couple days, and I think it sets the stage well for our research. It seems to me that we’re covering three main areas.

1. defining how designers work and what parts of that we’re interested in.
2. defining our approach to building a taxonomy
3. identifying potential directions for our prototypes

How Designers Work – Areas of Interest

In order to focus our work and chart out a unique area of research we have to narrow and refine what we’re looking at. I think we agreed that we are less concerned about the specifics of mark-making and gestural aspects of the designer’s tools. Others have covered much of that, and we think we can contribute more in the modes of design as they relate to making/crafting/forming/generating meaning. A big breakthrough in our thinking about design process was that designers not only make tangible outcomes, but as important to their process, designers make ideas from which the tangible outcomes result. In addition, we identified a pattern of making (at least for the tangible output) of, roughly, Hand ->Tool ->  Content -> Format.

Focus on Meaning Making

For both the taxonomy and working prototypes, we’re focusing on how designers make meaningful results rather than the lower level aspects of gesture, form-making and mark-making. In particular:

• making bits and ideas: the design process that we consider must include affordances around idea making as well as making bits (see below for more)
• meaningful modes of expression: we’re interested in how tools afford expressive and interesting making of meaning. The metaphor of musical instruments was raised in terms of how simple they are, yet how wide a range of output is possible (with skill). Further, we’re interested in the specific, idiosyncratic output tools afford. And lastly, we like tools that afford creative abuse.

Designers operate in two different modes: Making Ideas and Making Bits

We realized that a designers process for design includes two parts. Often the designers spends a significant amount of time generating ideas, whether through thinking, note making, sketching or other process. Ultimately, this process is about helping the designer shape what’s inside their head (or the collective heads of a group) rather than making tangible output. This part of design requires significantly different kinds of affordances than producing tangible output (bits). The designer often slides easily between the realm of ideas and made outcomes, and there is not always a clear dividing line.

Nevertheless, we believe that the affordances needed for making ideas vs. making bits are substantially different. And we believe that the realm of tools with affordances for making ideas for designers is fertile ground for digital enhancement.

Design Process: Hand -> Tool -> Content -> Format

In trying to understand the methodology of design in relation to affordance, we came to the following understanding:

• The designer makes a gesture with part of their body, typically the HAND
• That gesture intersects with a TOOL of some sort
• The tool operates on some form of CONTENT, either turning raw materials into communication, or reworking in some way existing “samples” into new forms.
• The working of the content intersects with its context which is the FORMAT of the communication, such as an 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper, or multimedia installation in a 20′x40′ room.

Gestures of Expression

We found 3 types of high level gestures for working with content as a way of creating a meaningful expression. Any of these three modes can be done in isolation or in combination.

• Additive/Generative – This is create new content out of thin air. Whether typing letters into a word-processor, applying graphite to paper, or making new vector shapes in Illustrator, the designer builds up new content.
• Subtractive – This approach involves a process of removing material from existing content in a process of editing and eliminating.
• Manipulative – Here the designer works with existing material to rearrange, distort, combine, and juxtapose.

Our Approach to a Taxonomy of Affordance

In trying to situate our research and develop a taxonomy of affordance, we discussed the goals of the taxonomy, the areas of affordance we’re interested in, and the format of the taxonomy.

Goals for a taxonomy

We identified the following goals for our taxonomy of affordance:

• Provide designers with inspiration for invention
• Analyze and understand design practice
• Inform the discourse of design
• Provide tools for design pedagogy

To achieve these goals, we’ll want to eventually publish our results in a range of forms including a website, conference papers, and articles.

Focus on Meaning Making Affordances

Rather than concentrate on detailed gestures of mark-making or the detailed affordances of tools and how they operate, we decided to focus our efforts on the quality of meaning making that affordances offer. As discussed earlier, we’re interested in:

• range of output – that affordances offer useful ranges of output in terms of making meaningful output
• idiosyncratic output – we think that the character of the affordance is extremely important, and that often the best tools have a personality, and a somewhat idiosyncratic and rich way of interpreting the designer’s gesture. This means that the design can select a particular tool knowing its character and how that may fit their desired meaning.
• creative abuse – often the best tools do their particular job well, but also afford creative abuse. i.e. permit unintended uses that the designer discovers in through process of design.

More generally, we’re interested in the designer’s process at the level of meaning making, the creative moment, and also as discussed the making of ideas.

What kinds of affordances should we look at?

We’re still in discussion on what affordances to look at. Should it be for making bits, making ideas, or? And should we also look at the affordances of humans? I.e. what role do they play in the mix? Hunter discusses this more in this post: Human Affordance and Ideation

Format of the Taxonomy

We discussed different forms of taxonomy, from hierarchical to grid based. But we are leaning towards some form of database driven taxonomy that affords the user to get at the collection in a range of ways, producing their own conclusions through an interactive and computational driven approach. In particular, we think that some form of tagging and possibly rating characteristics may provide the best and most flexible taxonomy.

We may need to build a custom database to achieve this.

Prototype Directions

While more discussion is needed, we identified several areas of potential work in prototypes. First, each RA is interested in the following (these need expansion):

• Hyun – How tools and affordances can be customizable, and how tools can learn the designer
• Chris – how can affordances help develop a culture for designers. also what affordances can help give media elements “thing qualities” through their behavior, agency, etc.
• Hunter – How does the workspace itself become a tool for design. How does it shape context, help with collaboration (within design and across other disciplines), and how can mobile tools afford the designer more power as they operate in different environments including working in other people’s workspaces.

Tools for Making Ideas

In addition to these areas of interest, a new idea was developed. Out of our discussion on making bits and making ideas, we came to the realization that there is an interesting opportunity in creating something that will help designers in their generation and refinement of ideas. This system might have the following characteristics:

• Helps manage project ideas and documents
• Permits sketching in many forms, and maintains a history of sketches
• Helps with brainstorming
• Is a separate device from the “workstation”
• Automatically tracks documents as they are created, and assists in the collection of those documents into projects
• Assists in the management of projects in terms of organizing ideas, documents, and outcomes.
• Also permits the leveraging of previous projects in the starting of new projects, e.g. copying an old project to establish a starting point for something new.

Our culture has an emphasis on thinking through making, and yet, there still exists a strong distinction for designers between the ideation and production phases of the creative process. This distinction has come up repeatedly in our discussions, phrased as one that divides the manipulation of ideas from the manipulation of bits. More specifically, we all seem to think that although digital tools created for media production are not ideal, they are far more adequately developed than digital tools for the creation and manipulation of ideas. Which is to say, there is a lack of attention being paid to the role digital affordances can play in the process of creating, manipulating, and refining meaning within the context of a project. There is also a lack of recognition, within creative software, that the process of any given project, if properly coordinated, captured, tagged, and interfaced, can form it’s own body of meaningful content that can inform not only the project at hand, but future projects as well. And of course, there is potential to have that process based content be generated, exist, and be accessed and manipulated outside of the standard computer interfaces that we currently employ, and in ways which are more appropriate, more productive, and more meaningful throughout the creative process.

My questions:

1. What, really, is the distinction between ideation and production? To what extent is this distinction one that is born out of inadequacies in our literacies, tools and processes? (That is to say, if a perfect set of tools and processes were to exist, could we dissolve the distinction and simply talk of creation?)

2. What role can a taxonomy of affordance play as we tackle the issue outlined above, and what role can it play more generally in any design process?

3. In the “Hand>Tool>Content>Format” scheme that we created, where is the most fruitful area for the creation of a taxonomy of affordance? Also, if, as Phil suggested, one can design formats without the presence of explicit content, how might such an approach be a productive and unique alternative to the standard conceptions of communication design? What might be the pitfalls of such an approach?

4. If it makes sense to talk about affordances in terms of relationships, and if human affordances are of concern here, then is the goal of this project to strengthen the relationship of the designer to his projects?

5. As a media designer, concerned with meaning, what do I want to work with? Or perhaps, in light of the question 4, what kind of relationship do I want with my projects?

Our outlined a flow chart “Hand>Tool>Content>Format” as a process to generate meaning raises a question: Are we assuming the human element in creating this meaning or are we overlooking it? The answer to this question leads to another important decision, that is to what extent to we immerse ourselves in the psychology of the human affordance and the complications associated with it.

Determining our interest in human affordance is particularly important as we explore the making of ideas. Mainly because there is so much variability in the act of making ideas. For example, there is at least two types of idea making: Ideas which lead to concept and ideas which assist in production. These two actions alone beg for two separate research agendas. Additionally, there are affordances that have a great impact on ideation and must be considered when developing tools and spaces for idea making. For example, I believe the affordance of time has the greatest influence on the resulting idea.

I have included a simple diagram depicting some of these thoughts: