I’d be very interested to hear from people working in this area, or for whom these ideas are interesting… these ideas form part of a PhD I’m currently undertaking. I’m getting ready to turn into the longish second last leg, where you work out wtf you’re really on about, and how you might communicate this coherently to someone who isn’t … well, you.

As I also mentioned before, I was happy to see that I could do it coherently in under 10 minutes

One thread of the presentation will discuss Etienne Wenger’s take on
ambiguity, as described in his book Communities of Practice. Rather
than talk about that now (and send you all away to the other talks
I wanted to muse on another big concept in Wenger’s theory:
reification.

Wenger says that “in reification we project ourselves into the world,
and not having to recognize ourselves in those projections, we
attribute to our meanings an independent existence” (p58)

This sounds like a good description of what happens when designers use
sketching to visualize the relationships between elements of a design.
Ive been looking for ways to frame this lately, and I think
reification would be a good start. Particularly as it compliments the
other half of Wenger’s duality (reification, participation)

Note to self: examine projects in the phd through this frame… What
artifacts emerge as critical?

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From these different opinions on knowledge, different theoretical perspectives are built, giving us different methodologies and eventually, tools to help us do our research. (we'll look more at this in weeks 3&4)

We then looked at some outcomes of research, books, projects, and reports.

I also presented the course outline, attached to this post

tasks for this week are to 

1. read the Course Notes for Module 1, including:

• Chapter 1 of Denzin and Lincoln’s (2003) text The Landscape of Qualitative Research http://digital.lib.rmit.edu.au/ereserve/notes06/grap2024/31259007734846.pdf where a deeper and broader explanation and discussion of qualitative research is written.

Maxwell (2005, p. 46 -55) discusses the development of a topic through ‘concept maps’. A digitised version of this section is available through the library (http://digital.lib.rmit.edu.au/ereserve/notes09/grap1174/31259009190724.pdf) 

Undertake the concept map for your research topic . After you have synthesised and clarified the topic, discuss your key research question and three sub-questions in class and on the discussion board . Once others have stated their questions, try asking them questions, providing feedback and helping one another in clarifying and focusing the question more . 

See and download the full gallery on posterous

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GRAP2024-course notes and outline.pdf (1673 KB)

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learning activities and assignments plan.pdf (21 KB)

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Designers constantly deal with the ill-defined to help people negotiate uncertain situations or artifacts, but how well do we understand our own ways of dealing with ambiguity? Using examples, I’ll discuss three approaches to ambiguity that can inform design, and how these approaches can affect peoples experience of products.

This ties in with recent moves in my PhD, and builds on my thinking about artifacts and affinity.

I’m thinking of presenting different approaches to ambiguity because it appears to be a largely unexamined foundation of design practice. How we approach ambiguity can have the largest effect on a design, because it frames the epistemological foundation of a design, or how a design understands and uses knowledge.

The three approaches that I’m contemplating using describe an arc along a positivist – constructivist spectrum: from extreme empiricism (I’m thinking Herbert Simon etc) to phenomenological (Heidegger or Dreyfus), with the pragmatists (Dewey) in the middle.

The key challenge will be to cover this ground in the allotted 10 minutes, and keep the predominately professional audience engaged. I think it’s totally possible, but will need to draw things back to real world examples constantly. In fact I’ll need to create some exemplary anchors early on to use throughout the presentation.

Sent from my iPhone

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Its great to see how other teachers introduce their projects.

Today I’m adding a 20 minute section to a subject introduction seminar (post about my bit here), and it’s great to be back in the theater. Kyla’s intro is awesome.. using tinderbox to situate her subject this semester in the context of previous subjects, and what kind of skills you’ll both need and develop during the semester. It’s really encouraging as an example of the pedagogical ideas that the Media program began renewing a few years ago coming to fruition.

This semester the subject is centered on the new roles of Social Media producer. Check out these three job descriptions

Even watching Kyla’s intro makes me think about upgrading my ancient copy of tinderbox.. but then again.. at this stage in my PhD, I need another writing environment like I need a hole in the head. (this is being written in scrivener)

There’s a thread in this issue about how the outcomes drive the tools – Scrivener looks easier to me to fit in the dissertation (ie linear) format. Tinderbox is great for the non-linear type of writing project. But come to think of it, when I’ve use TB in the past it has been to use my ability in the non-linear to create what was essentially a linear work. Rendering a reading of the thought networks flat.

Interesting thing about it is that they make it really easy for you to get your first “freebee”: by giving you 4 purchases on the card you only have to purchase 1 coffee to then experience the satisfaction of a free coffee.

nice example of the law of reciprocity in action.

I’m currently writing two papers. At this point, bits of these papers seem to resemble two chapters of my thesis.

The first paper discusses what I’m calling the affinity gene (apologies to Peter F Hamilton) or a way of framing design capability in terms of affinity. This idea came out of a lot of reading, practice, and the realization (while presenting on a public panel at ozchi 2009) that just about every aspect of design has a dependence on the designers ability to activate and modulate their perception of affinity between objects.

If I was writing science fiction, I’d say that better control of affinity makes for a better designer. Which leads me to the second paper.

Designers use artifacts to activate their perception of affinity. There, I said it. Seems obvious, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Krippendorf has talked about this, and I particularly like his expansive take on artifacts, ranging from objects to discourses.

In this second paper we’re not looking at this aspect of activation, mainly because it relies on the first paper, and neither are published yet . My colleagues Hugh Macdonald, Yoko Akama and I are using Dewey’s model of the expressive object to frame artifacts in terms of how they help people inhabit an experience. In Dewey’s terms, some artifacts are statements, that lay out the circumstances under which an experience may take place; while other artifacts express an experience, or are an experience. These expressions are what we’re talking about when we say that artifacts can help people to inhabit experience.

I’ve been thinking about where this term inhabit came from, and realised that I’ve picked it up from James Wood. In How Fiction Works, Wood uses the term in two ways. Initially, he suggests that writers should inhabit their stories – or attempt to empathize with their characters. Secondly, he describes the “free indirect style” – a technique writers use to help readers inhabit the experience of a character.

So, lets riff on this for a moment, as we follow Diana, an interaction designer, down the street… The cracks in the sidewalk slip away as a couple round the corner, spines scrunched in an iPhone gait, oblivious to anything outside their user experience bubble…

Hugh Dubberly recently published an article called Models of Models where he introduces the concept of models and then breaks down the constituent parts so the reader can think about how to make and evaluate models for themselves. (hint – read the pdf, it communicates more richly than the post. the article also appears in Interactions Mag )

I was looking at this while thinking a lot about my PhD and some curriculum review that IxDA is currently undertaking with BDW. The following thoughts particularly resonated:

Passing models from one generation to the next is a responsibility of teachers and managers. Models are what students take away from school and what young people take away from early jobs. Models are what you remember after leaving.

I recently spoke with Hugh about a wide arc of ideas and histories related to interaction design, cybernetics and education. The issue of literacy (of systemic or ecological thinking) came up repeatedly, and re-reading this article reminds me to write a little about it.

If models are (as Alan Kay states) where “we do most of our work” (and I think they are) then why not teach modeling as well as models?

Let me explain. It is my belief that education is obsessed with trends; what’s relevant now? who’s hot now? what extends the canon? etc. These invariably manifest in a model of some sort; frameworks, theories, templates and protocols can all be traced back to a model. These are important to pass on. Reinvention is silly, except when it can help us understand.