Category Archives: design theory

LOA and solution-space constraints

John H Holland, in his book Emergence on page 185, amplifies a description of the creative process that I presented to my students in Mexico (though – like almost all of the quotes and references I write about – it’s … Continue reading

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Design Education in the Future

If the last big rethink for design was “human centered design,” then what is this generation’s message about the nature of design? Continue reading

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analogies and inspiration

I’ve always been a wanderer with insatiable curiosity – and since I was introduced to *D*esign I’ve seen that as an asset and a skill. Building that skill has meant looking for bigger and bigger abstractions. To have any idea … Continue reading

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object oriented design

Combining the basic idea of a relational database with the recursive representation of the object model as found in firebug’s dom navigator would allow a more intuitive access to sato’s design information framework.

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the new planning

I came to ID thinking that Design and Planning still operated like in the 50s, setting out a five year plan or a grand vision of a shiny future. I’m finding that there’s a different kind of big-picture, a model … Continue reading

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planning is dead

Long-term planning, in its traditional sense, is dead. The ability to specifically predict the tone, tenor, overall shape, and other details of a corporation, society, family, or any other complex organization more than a few years in the future is … Continue reading

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science of quality

Christopher Bartneck claims that design is the science of quality. I was meditating on that and thought that maybe quality is all the stuff that other sciences can’t qualify. any better thoughts?

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David Foster Wallace as visionary

Reading in the New Yorker about David Foster Wallace today was kind of surreal. The story reminds me of myself on many levels, but I was surprised to feel that I would have had a lot more empathy with him … Continue reading

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Alexis vs Klinker

A fascinating article contrasting the ID “sellout” viewpoint of design with the Cranbook “artsy-fartsy” viewpoint: http://www.cranbrookdesign.com/index.php/topics/more/design_versus_innovation_the_cranbrook_iit_debate/ I’m pleased and surprised how little Apple came up in this discussion, but I find it amusing that Jobs and Ivy have purposefully kept … Continue reading

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user-centric

give me something to stand for!

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