User:Kim/reading/A Reflective Conversation with Materials

Reflective Conversation with Materials: An interview with Donald Schön by JohnBennett
in 'Bringing Design to Software' by Terry Winograd, 1996

Text

three paradigms for practice by Donald Schön:

1. Reflection in Action = closely tied to experience of surprise
   1. ...while in the process evolve the way of doing it. (doing /) playing while on occasion noting and responding
2. Stop and Think (practitioner pauses to reflect, takes distance)
3. Reflection on practice is a more meta reflection on practice, habits and repetitive experiences

• importance of unpredictability in design: emphasizes that there is no direct path between designers intention and outcome (how something is used/ perceived)

As you work a problem, you are continually in the process of developing a path into it, forming new appreciations and understandings as you make new moves.

• on conversation with the materials designers judgements can have the intimacy of a conversational relationship
  • receiving response from the medium
• inventions made through conversation with the users (example 3M tape) and how they use product
• "A good designer strives to make the details work so well that they become invisible to the user." I dont think so – this means

1. hiding away key aspects of an object or product
2. allowing for hints to the user how the object works and give different entries to it

• Objects failure or difficulty in use "makes visible its insides (how it is made, of what it is made)"
• tacitness (Michael Polanyi, 1966) in a smoothly working artifact, its operations, inherent materials become invisible to the user
• on the necessity of taste as a designer, not as in 'style' but developing an inner gyroscope (judging if something is good or not)

Questions

How do you currently document your design/artistic practice? Could you bring or describe a specific example in class? How do you feel about the way you do it right now logistically?

bring:

my website(s)

screenshots folder

both involve a lot of manual work, low-tech and local (on my computer) I like that about it but aim for more structure categorize screenshots in subfolders, use sth like pelican (static site generator based on simple markdown language and folder structure)

What is your approach to reflecting on your design/artistic practice? Could you bring an example of how you have made a specific design decision?"

I like play and attentively staying with the visual process (Designing websites, if possible I dont make drafts but start coding directly, using material language from beginning on)

form is always conversing with content and material

network-matters.xyz

website stretched across 3 axes, encompassing my different approaches to the field, multi-layeredness of information mirrors deep structure of code based text, experimental interaction with the site brings forth unexpected angles, entirely based on are.na as a cms (stretching boundaries of a platform)