The Model as a Learning Portfolio

Human-computer Interaction, 1999

When system developers design a computer system (or other information artifact), they must inevitably make judgments as to how to abstract the worksystem and how to represent this abstraction in their designs. In the past, such abstractions have been based either on a traditional philosophy of cognition or cognitive psychology or on intuitive, spontaneous philosophies. A number of recent developments in distributed cognition , activity theory , and experientialism have raised questions about the legitimacy of such philosophies. In this article, we discuss from where the abstractions come that designers employ and how such abstractions are related to the concepts that the users of these systems have. In particular, we use the theory of experientialism or experiential cognition as the foundation for our analysis. is Professor of HumanComputer Systems at Napier University, Edinburgh, with interests in all areas of interactive systems design, particularly methods and models for design and the application of knowledge-based techniques for HCI. Manuel Imaz is a professional computer system designer undertaking research into the conceptual foundations of software engineering methods within the HCI group at Napier University.

Research-in-Progress, 1997

Proceedings of 5th European Academy of Design …, 2006

A new perspective opens up, when emphasis is put on objects in the interaction between users and artifacts. The topic will be approached from a design point of view and is not dealt with in a general way. The frame of reference uses semiotic philosophy (Peirce). Accordingly, interaction includes the sensual or imaginative, the actually physical and the symbolic. Then, the conception of interaction is not reduced to either the physical or the symbolic level as is often the case in design analyses. Interaction is conceived as including both subjective and more general points of view. Habits are formed by affordances of the built environment. In order to achieve better results, designers can conceive artefacts as more than subordinated objects during interaction. The examples show how people act in public spaces, which are dominated by the organization of artefacts. This paper will examine how objects and people interact. A new perspective opens up, when special emphasis in the analysis is put on objects. The topic is deliberately approached from a design point of view and is not only dealt with in a general way, i.e., the paper aims at highlighting theoretical issues inherent in the design process. The frame of reference is built on the semiotic philosophy by Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914). Accordingly, interaction between persons and artefacts takes place on many levels including the sensual or imaginative, the actually physical, and the symbolic. The approach seems to suit design, because the conception of interaction is not reduced to either the physical or the symbolic level as is often the case in design analyses. In order to achieve better results, designers may conceive artefacts as more than subordinated objects during the interaction. The main objective of the paper is to study how objects influence human action. Artefacts in use constitute habits of action. They seem to play a bigger role both physically and semantically (or semiotically, if you like) than they are usually given in design analyses. (Theoretical contributions on so called design semantics during the last fifteen years are shortly examined in this paper, e.g., Krippendorff, 1989 and 1995. The difference between design semantics and design rhetoric is commented upon with reference to Buchanan, 1989 and 1995.) Objects have earlier been studied as representations (e.g., literature survey in Vihma, 1995) and as taking part in narratives (recently by Kotro and Pantzar, 2002). More often, however, objects are conceived as serving some practical purposes and fulfilling people's practical needs. In my view, it would be important to look at the relationship the other way round, i.e., focus on how objects affect people's behaviour, their thoughts and emotions. Further, it would be helpful to study how objects take up space and influence also other objects, not only persons using them. The combination of single artefacts in a limited space is crucial for the creation of the atmosphere in the room, as we know as designers.

Design Studies, 2002

In this paper, we present an action-theoretical account of use and design. Central to this account is the notion of a user plan, which leads us to distinguish a cycle of plan design from one of artefact design. We comment on the nature and scope of our account from the perspective of design methodology in general, and we show that it can be employed to analyse the shortcomings of one design method in particular, namely quality function deployment. Finally, we examine some consequences for a philosophy of artefacts and their functions. k c 1 Davidson, D 'Replies to essays I-IX' in B Vermazen and M Hintikka (eds) Essays on Davidson: action and events, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1985) 2 Audi, R 'Intention, cognitive commitment, and planning' Synthese Vol 86 (1991) 361-378 3 Bratman, M Intentions, plans and practical reason Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA (1987) 4 Audi, R Practical reasoning Routledge, London (1989) chapter 7 5 Galle, P 'Design as intentional action: a conceptual analysis' Design Studies Vol 20 (1999) 57-81 304 Design Studies Vol 23 No. 3 May 2002

Envisioning Architecture: Space, Time, and Meaning (EAEA), 2017

Capturing a message of meaning as contained in the milieu of the contemporary city and its architecture presents new challenges for a student often classified as a digital native. As a response, the authors of this study chose to use music and gaming as vehicles to engage students in processes of abstraction, analysis, interpretation, and craft. The sense of time and meaning, as embodied in instrumental music and the ancient game of chess, challenged design students to develop ideas associated with sequential space and city form. Mobile media technology in the form of analyzing music, learning the game of chess, mapping and providing information in field study, and surveying student reactions were employed. Structured methods of traditional representation and drawing assisted the construction of physical models and communicated aspects of space, time, and meaning for the student. A translation of music into a limited vocabulary of points, lines, and planes As part of their first semester of study in the field of environmental design, students were given a project that embraced a limited and elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume as a means to translate a piece of instrumental music into a spatially defined passageway within a confined framework. Students were asked to consider the elements as a sequential series of informed components as a means to capture a series of spaces that at times may constrict, swell, or shift in direction within the predefined framework. To minimize the occurrence of preconceived elements such as stairs, ceilings, and floors, the passageway was to be conceived as a gravity-free environment, thus promoting concepts of compression and release in place of ascent and descent. The inclusion of music as a thematic inspiration for the project offered the students both a series of constraints and strategies as they began diagramming their initial interpretations of the given selection towards the physical embodiment of the music into defined spatial passage. Concepts such as rhythm, tempo, pitch, or transitions have a dependency on time, and therefore, suggest two initial approaches for the project – one that focuses on the creation of volumetric centers, or swells, along the passage and then develops the transitions between these centers, or an approach that embraces the development and manipulation of a spine that reacts to the various translated information and directly confronts, dictates, and affects the movement of the user through the defined path. At the conclusion of the project, students are asked to consider how the changing of scale for their physical models might affect the meaning of how they use point, line, and plane to create a defined volume. The students are asked to shift the scale from the representative environmental condition of their design to that of 1:1. Criteria are then given to construct a collective threshold out of the series of projects that relates directly to that of the human scale, thus introducing a new associative meaning to the project as they work collectively to define and capture space using the original elemental vocabulary of point, line, plane, and volume. A translation of precedents into the typologies of a chess set The game of chess is one of the most recognizable products of civilization. The Chicago skyline, as a home to many distinctive high-rise buildings, is an intersection of design and planning across multiple scales and epochs. Students were challenged to examine how the pieces, the game board, and the rules associated with chess could potentially embody the variety of designers and planners who shaped Chicago and the trajectory of environmental design across approximately a 150-year period. Students could then recognize the city skyline as a design project that evolves over a period of time. The meaning of these individual expressions then can be read as part of the meaning of a collective whole, and a city’s overall visual and physical identity. Students were introduced to a brief history of chess sets, ranging from archaeological findings dating from 12th century Scotland, through to the 19th century legacy of British writer Howard Staunton, who endorsed the general design of the sets we often see today. Students were assigned a literature and image review of six personalities that practiced in Chicago to influence the design for six piece typologies found in a standard chess set. Students chose at random six names from a list of 50 people associated with Chicago architecture, landscape architecture, urban planning, or public art. A mobile app was also developed prior to a four-day field trip to the city, giving students a geographic and digital reference to many of the sites and personalities who shaped Chicago architecture and planning. Given Chicago’s noted heritage and tradition of tall buildings, students were asked to consider the potential role of tripartite division of form. As conveniently observed, the traditional Staunton chess sets possess similar divisions, becoming a vehicle for visual discovery. During the literature / image review, students were asked to sketch a comfort pallet of details, forms, concept sketches, geometries, and pictorial interpretations from the work of the six assigned inspirations, and from examples experienced in Chicago. Students created sketches using digital tablets or sketchbooks. Students then constructed a set of chess pieces, using materials of their own choosing, and were challenged to document the construction process, whether using an additive, subtractive or hybrid method of craft. An emphasis on procedural design process was communicated here, as well as the notion of the ergonomic / look and feel of the pieces, and whether their interpretations were still able to function in game play. Students were also asked to consider the assigned “move” behavior of each piece. Such challenges, interpretations, and learning opportunities seasoned and imbued the students’ design thinking and process throughout. A group-wide chess game day was held to test the effectiveness of the sets and game boards. As a final step, students made two sets of drawings. One set became the procedural story of one chess piece in isometric view, as depicted in four to six steps. Such a set of drawings was intended to show how the piece was made. A second drawing challenged students to think of their chess pieces as a collective city skyline in frontal elevation projection, imagining the chess pieces in the scale of city buildings. Both drawings were rendered using a paper cut out method, placed behind a translucent sheet of vellum that contained the line art. Discussions of how these two layers and methods of representation stimulated discussion. Conclusion It is hoped that the exploration of music and gaming in these two design projects shall serve as an effective vehicle of communication between notions of space, time, and meaning as embodied in two forms of art and culture that can stimulate a student’s imagination and design thinking. The authors are confident the exploration across scales, metaphors, narratives and forms found in the contemporary city and in architectural space can create rich inquiry in the mind of the beginning design student and form a foundation for continued dialogue between experience and representation.

2010

Nowadays, it is widely recognized that an ICT tool cannot be built without know ing who will use it and what they will do with. In this perspective, Human-Computer Interaction community (Carroll 1990; Jarke, Tung Bui and Carroll 1998; Young and Barnard 1987; Young et al. 1989) developed a scenario-based approach contrasting with the traditional information system design. The scenario describes an existing or envisioned system from the perspective of one or more users and included a narration of their goals, plans and reactions (Rosson and Carroll 2002). As a result, design is founde d on the use of scenarios as a central representation for analysis and design of use. The scenario-based design appeares to be a first step in the integration of users in the design of ICT tool. However, we would like to underline in this paper a more active role of users in the design process. According to Orlikowski (2000) while a technology can be seen to have been constructed with particular material...

2009

The process of designing a project begins at the preliminary stage of searching for a core idea that defines it. This paper turns its attention to the oscillation between reality and imagination, order and chaos, the narration, the wish, the time and the diachronic or a-chronic placement of the creator, which are central in this preliminary stage of formulating the core idea of the designing process. As Plotinus suggested "With its introduction, form composes and arranges the various parts that constitute the whole. By coordinating theses various parts, form creates unity. This is because the idea (that is to say, the form) is one and because what it shapes also must be one, at least as much as the multiplicity of the parts permits." An enquiry on the processes that lead to the materialization of a project basically aims at an attempt to comprehend the process of the design of this project. There exist actions performed in different levels relating to the operation of the project, its material and technical decisions, to the history of form, to aesthetics, culture, ethics, and the representation of socioeconomic conditions. At the heart of this enquiry, the most indeterminate or contingent of those actions is probably the core concept of design or, in other words, the process by which an idea surfaces from the mind of the designer to become the core idea of a design process. This is not to propose that an idea can be detached from its dialectic relationship to culture, its function, or the technical part of the materialization of a project; but rather to highlight the enquiry to this preliminary part of the process of design. An enquiry of the sort would be vain if it tried to offer definitive answers. Hence the object of this study is not to provide answers to questions but rather to submit some initial ruminations regarding a process that is fair to describe as esoteric. In order to present those ruminations we will use, as narrative companions, a novel written by Lewis Carrol «Through the Looking-Glass», a game-a kaleidoscope, and a set of assumptions and paradoxes derived from chaos theory. The main idea is that through the looking glass, Alice may be searching the very same thing that the designer searches during the designing process: the mirror-image of reality and its description, not in an enslaving manner, but productively, in the world of his imagination; the relationship between that mirror-image and its archetype, its founding idea.

Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Education and Research in Computer Aided Architectural Design in Europe (eCAADe)

In this paper we present the case for employing metaphor to explain the impact of technology. This contrasts with the empirical-theoretical method of inquiry. We also contrast two widely held metaphors of architectural education (the EPISTEMOLOGICAL and the COMMUNITY metaphors) and of the role of the computer (the MAINFRAME and the URIQUITOUS COMPUTING metaphors). We show how in each case both metaphors result in different kinds of decision making in relation to resourcing an architecture school. 1. Understanding Technology It is difficult to plan for computer technology. The technology is changing rapidly and unpredictably. Technologies also change work practices, so it is difficult to identify need independently of the technology that is presented to address that need. Unfortunately, there is no empirical-theoretical method to assist in decision making in this area. According to the theoretical method, we make observations about the practices of a group of people (such as designers). Then there is an attempt to identify variables, to find correlations between variables, and to form generalisations. In so doing there is an attempt to uncover the underlying structure of the practices under study. We then move into a new experimental context where the generalisations serve as tools for prediction. So we apply our findings to new situations, such as designers working with Computers. We would know from our generalisations about designers that they require large drawing surfaces, they need somewhere to display their work, they work with models, and they sketch. We could also plan for emerging technologies, such as computer-mediated collaborative design. We would know that designers need common drawing surfaces, a means of exchanging information, audit trails, and they need face-to-face contact with groups of people. Such generalisations would thereby guide our research programs, curriculum development, and decision making about computer resources. However, the invention, design and integration of computer technologies is far more fluid than this. The process is more usually one of prototyping and informal testing in use. It is obvious that the practice of design is influenced by the technologies to hand. In tacit recognition of this influence, computer-aided design research is usually conducted around case studies. In a similar manner, teaching programs and resource decisionmaking are usually worked out by pooling experiences. Underlying principles are elusive. Does this mean that CAD research programs, curriculum development, and

2012

Each generation entrusts the collective future to the next. Just like the oral traditions of our past continue to manifest in our consciousness, we need to tell stories today that will free the imagination. Designers in particular need to develop the ability to articulate the imagined possibilities that the narrative imagination can create. In order to appreciate the complexity of interactions that are occurring in a spatial or object orientated context we need to think about the imagination as a vehicle to discover and explore these new possibilities. To do this we need to enhance our capacity to access the imagination and use it as a constructive and formative tool for generating concepts. This paper sets out to consider storytelling in design education as a vehicle for imaginative exploration. The narrative is used as the vehicle to stimulate and manage this imagination. Reference is made to a design education intervention where the focus of activity is on developing a narrative ...