FYI, this may be of value to those of you, like me, trying to grapple and make sense of the recent (and ongoing) Cambrian-like explosion of new design activities, fields, or domains of practice that has caused some angst and confusion among those who affiliate themselves with "interaction design".
How to organize it all and make sense of it? I offer this as one helpful aid. A Design Typology Continuum: http://bit.ly/vYbBl PDF File: 355K Some may recall I previewed this with a few folks at Interaction'09 in Vancouver. Basically this poster is a personal attempt at making sense of the craziness of the design world lately, heavily based upon Richard Buchanan's "Four Orders of Design", which succinctly maps out the development of design moving from "posters and toasters" into the new challenges of social interaction, information architecture, service design, and managing as designing, in the business arena and beyond, into general culture. I'm not sure of Buchanan's latest thinking (his model is at least 10 yrs old now) but I've updated the language to reflect much of thinking going on around "design thinking" and "transformation" and "digital product design", for example. Some things to observe in this diagram that warrant further pondering: * The movement (Left to Right) from concrete, materially crafted results ("things") towards increasingly abstract, immaterial outcomes ("activities") that elude easy pointing and saying "this is the result" * Relatedly, increasing degree of complexity and "wickedness" of problems, entering realms of business, society, and culture * The materials of design evolve from tangible (inks, matter, pixels(?)) towards intangible (values, attitudes, lifestyles), further fuzzying conventional design boundaries and provoking "what is it designers do?" sorts of questions * I deliberately made the visually richest area to be in that middle zone between 3rd and 4th Order, as the place we're at now, with so much potential and excitement and lots of happenings going on now in Design at-large. I sense there's some cycling going on, with methods and approaches across the Orders feeding and impacting each other. * I think these need to be highlighted in some way: Digital Product Design (for lack of better phrase) and Social Change, so I created sub-clusters, positioning them near the 3rd / 4th Orders. These seem to be the "hot" areas now deserving attention, from Web 2.0/SaaS/multitouch to designing for eco/green, or Third World, etc. * The final part at the far right, hypothesizes what may be next, "massive change" (borrowing Bruce Mau's phrase) featuring truly wicked problems...perhaps the ultimate field of design is focused on ethics, involving transcendental & universal values of culture/humanity/society to tackle huge problems impacting govt, edu, poverty, human rights, etc. I don't know, but I sense that may be on the distant horizon (or how the trajectory is aiming) Any constructive feedback or thoughtful suggestions appreciated. Or simply take it as it is :-) Believe me, I'll keep evolving it over the years...Enjoy! (CAUTION: This diagram isn't for everyone :-) And in NO WAY am I suggesting yet another stupid title-war or definition spew-fest (especially after the last few weeks' threads!). That's not the point. The purpose is to offer substantive fodder for discussion, thoughtful reflection (privately or collectively), and perhaps even an enlightening of minds as of yet unaware of design's broad reach and potential...particularly Interaction Design as a philosophy and perspective of humanist action, and the boundaries thereof.) ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
