From: Meg Armstrong

Date: 28 April 2007

As good an idea today, as it was a few days ago.

Who killed design? I think that the ability of “design” itself to become entangled in (or to be by definition inextricable from) a web of other issues has “killed” it but only in the sense that people may talk less about design and more about these other things (e.g., methods, metrics, planning, money, sustainability, etc.) . . . and I’ll talk about them, too.

Currently in the field of design education (what is this, exactly?) I’ll ask more who WILL kill design and pose a few questions about the present/future moments of design as an activity situated in crisis and uncertainty - not of its own discipline but of the environment(s) and ecosystems in which it has meaning (e.g., the environment, business, everyday experience as framed by consumerism, the “innovation factory” of contemporary consulting, etc.). I’ll also talk about how design is (problematically) situated as a “specialism” or a “discipline” which makes it difficult for design to mean/to live well. Why? because the sorts of problems we are facing (in crisis, in uncertainty) are not those that can or should be addressed by isolated disciplines.

That’s sort of it. Hope it is useful to the discussion.

From: Bill Buxton

Date: 23 April 2007

[In response to Bruce Nussbaum’s Are Designers The Enemy Of Design? (http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/03/are_designers_t.html)]

I think that it is more of an (uncharacteristically) undisciplined rant, rather than a well reasoned argument. But it pushes some timely buttons, and brings up some key issues. Even though I would love to debate him on his position, and think that he has real flaws in his understanding of things and how he talks about it, that does not mean that I don’t think it worthwhile. Hell, if someone as bright as Bruce has this reaction / comes to this analysis, then there is a problem that needs addressing.

On the one hand, I may well fall into his categorization of one of the arrogant lot that “suck” and are the enemy. Why, because as in my book, I declare Don Norman’s statement (title of Epilogue in Emotional Design), “we are all designers” as “nonsense”. Of course, the proof that I am right (see how arrogant I am?) is simple, and far more logical than Bruce’s rant:

IF: Everyone is a designer
THEN: Everything is already created by a designer
THEREFORE: There is no need for specialized design training, thinking, or skills, since everyone is already a designer and must therefore have these skills automatically by virtue of their very being alive.
QED: by absurdum

As I say about Don’s ridiculous statement, we are no more all designers because we choose the colour of our walls, or decorate our living room, than we are all mathematicians because we can count our change at the grocery store. Design at this level is analogous to arithmetic, which is a very different thing than mathematics. A little clarification is in order if one does not want to speak at a trivial level – which is largely what Don and Bruce come close to doing in their arguments.

Who killed design:
- Those in a position of influence, despite not being designers, who pronounce upon it without doing their homework.
- Those who have done their homework by not pronouncing upon it in a clearly articulated way which counters the former.

Designers are especially ineffectual in articulating what they do, why they do it, and how they do it. Hence, we have the situation (alluded to in Lawson, for one) which I see as being analogous to artists letting art critics, rather than practitioners define the discipline and speak for it (for example, to the best of my knowledge neither Don nor Bruce – as much as I like and respect both- have any design credentials or experience; rather, they are critics, just like Clement Greenburg – which is a compliment, by the way). Would you recommend any student go to Greenburg to learn to paint? If not, then Don and Bruce are equally unsuitable as instructors in design (as opposed to design criticism).

Here is my final point to kick the design profession in the butt – since I agree that design is partially / largely the author of its own problems.

If we believe that design is a distinct profession, and we believe that there is something distinct that we call “design thinking”, how is it, as just one example, that – to the best of my knowledge – there is not a single book on design, design education, or design thinking, that says anything about the role of critique in design, much less its central role in its practice?

And, by the way, this includes:
- Laseau, P. (1980). Graphic thinking for architects and designers. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.
- Lawson, B. (1997). How designers think: The design process demystified, 3e. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
- Rowe, P. (1987). Design thinking. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Lawson largely dismisses much/most of the writing on design theory, as falling into the “those who can do, those who can’t write about design” category. Based on reading about 12 linear feet of books on design over the past few years, I largely agree. But the penalty for being so inarticulate about the discipline is that it is left to others like Don and Bruce to give it its face. While what they contribute has real value, just rendering the nose – no matter how well executed – the nose alone does little to define the whole face, much less its character and potential.

What is clear is that there is a problem, and Bruce does a service how helping shine a light on it, even if I have some problems with the direction that he points it. If we want to actually teach design - such as it is relevant to this community, and the technologies that we deal with – then we have to start to make sense of things. The good news is that there is some history that we can draw on for guidance. What gives me some hope is expressed in a side-bar near the end of my book. My view is that we are at exactly the same place that industrial design was in the US around 1927-29. This is when Dreyfuss, Teague and Loewy all set up in practice, and Earl went to GM. They also were making it up as they went along. And they did figure it out by transferring their experience from other (not always design) discipline. And along the way, they helped establish the curriculum for the industrial design programs of some of the great schools today.

This is where we are today, I think, and it is not such a bad or untenable place to be. We just have some work to do.

If I am right, there are two things in this that give me cause for optimism - Of those mentioned, all but Loewy are still in business
- This is despite the practices being established right before the great depression

OK Bruce and Don, tell me again that we are all designers and, by implication, there is no need for the distinct design professional. If it is true now, convince me that it wasn’t true then as well then. And at the same time, tell me how all of these practices not only survived the great depression, but thrived in it.

Nuff said.

From: Bill Buxton

Date: 23 April 2007

As for the “taste” – “Genius” dichotomy (see Anijo’s dialogue below), I wouldn’t be so fast to characterize genius as occurring in an instant. A wise person (Mark Twain? Certainly no me), said something to the effect that while that idea occurred in an instant, the preparation for that instant took a lifetime of experience and work.

From: Anijo Mathew

Date: 5 April 2007

In response to Fil…

We are indeed honoured to have you participate in this discussion, Fil. Your viewpoints will be immensely valuable in the framing of this panel. However to take the conversation further, here is a critique of a part of your write up:

I am intrigued by your statement that as a designerly organism we have an inherent advantage over non designerly organism. This is great – the framework allows for us to understand how we (puny, weak) human beings were able to adapt multiple system changes and yet survive. HOWEVER while the notion that designing is natural to all human beings is interesting and easy to assume (given that everyone designs some), it would be inherently wrong to assume that all human beings are designers. The act of designing does not constitute reasoning that every person who designs is a designer! Let me explain - (I claim that) It is not designerly activity that gives us the evolutionary advantage; it is our mimicking ability. DESIGN per se was done by ONE or FEW designers…the others only MIMICKED this to their advantage. Of course in the act of mimicking, there was some adjustment…some ‘designing’. But overall the design can only be attributed to the designer not to everyone who mimicked.

At this point, let me quote Alberto Perez-Gomez (in his book – Built Upon Love) who cites Le Blond – “ [there is a distinction] between a work that is generated by rules of “taste” and a work of true genius. Genius produces work in an instant, whereas taste develops through time and study. Unlike genius, taste relies on knowledge of many rules and it produces beauties that are based on convention. To be beautiful according to the rules of taste, an object must appear elegant, finished, and effortless; but in a beautiful work of genius there is a certain neglect and irregularity”.

I would claim that your wife’s act of “designing” is generated simply through taste. If so, we should distinguish between her works and a work by a designer. And thus acknowledge that DESIGN is not the mimicking of convention but the generation of new convention!

I want to bring up another point…why is only in design that we accord democratic freedom? Why not in other activities like healing, or music, or film making, or drama? Healing – my mother uses native remedies to treat many many ailments…her knowledge of native remedies is extensive. Yet, she is not a doctor. Her degree of freedom to heal is limited…when it comes to a serious ailment, we seek the advice of a professional – a doctor.

Music – I sing…everyday…but I cannot be in any form or function of the word, be called a musician. I do not have the requisite training or the breadth of knowledge or the years of practice that a musician would have. My wife has years of classical training…her control over her voice is amazing…something I cannot think of! And so on…you get the point!

Now I don’t want to seem as though I am shouting for the generation of an “elite core” of designers…I am not! I can see why interdisciplinary activity would lead to better design…BUT I do want an acknowledgment that not EVERYONE can design! And when we start playing with the notion that disciplinary boundaries are being torn apart, we also have to be cautious that not everything that is made or created is necessarily DESIGNED!

- Anijo Mathew

From: Fil Salustri

Date: 15 March 2007

I may be joining late, but as they say - better late than never. I hope I can contribute something meaningful. (NOTE: I updated the link to my web “presence” at the top of this page, cuz it wasn’t quite right )

I’d like to start by commenting on some of the points raised by Anijo & Scott in their entry of 01.09.07.

They ask the question: “why is it that so many people claim ‘design’ as a methodology or procedural component and yet have such drastically differing points of view?”

I think this is because designing is an activity that is natural to humans, and that it was recognized as a pertinent element of other enterprises independently. Indeed, I’d go so far as to suggest that a designerly organism has an evolutionary advantage over non-designerly organisms and that as a result we all have some ability to design. But by embedding it into other enterprises without really recognizing its universality, it has developed into a thousand distinct dialects, as it were.

Another point regards the notion of design not belonging to an “elite core” because it has become inherently interdisciplinary. I would suggest that all good designers have always been interdisciplinary in their interests and skills. Sure, they might excel at one particular discipline or another, but they have a certain breadth of ability too that breaches the silos of conventional disciplines. It also begs a question about the distinction between people who are “professional” designers and people who design out of necessity without any particular training. My wife has no training in design, yet she designs. I design too, but my expertise (access to a body of knowledge and ability to use it) allows me to design differently - and I would say generally better - than her. Indeed, I think people are always designing things, but they don’t necessarily know they’re doing it.

So, if we define “elite core” as those who can access the body of knowledge of design, then I must label myself elitist. It may be a natural ability to design, but professional designers raise their ability above non-professionals.

It is also interesting to consider - what exactly are the cognitive and methodological differences in design as practised by professionals versus lay-folk?

Related to this is the notion of design being co-opted by non-designers. Klaus Krippendorff has written alot about this; cf his new book The Semantic Turn.

Anijo also wrote “Today, when an individual designs something they must consider the impact of their work on the environment, culture, society, legal system and any other system with which the product of a design process might interact, either intentionally or unintentionally.” Again, I would argue that this has always been the case - in good design. Three things have changed, however.

One: more politics. In these weird, politically correct, litigious days, it behooves one to be extremely explicit about treating particular issues. Once upon a time, it was nearly an unconscious act - but to avoid liability, we find we need to behave differently these days. Insofar as bringing otherwise un- or sub-conscious mental content up into consciousness is usually good because it affords one more opportunity to reflect critically on one’s activities, this is a good thing. But it also gets taken way too far too.

Two: more methodological knowledge of design. While design as a proper (inter)discipline is still new, there exists today a wealth of information that designers of even just 1 generation ago lacked. This knowledge allows designers to act in response to broad interdisciplinary requirements much better than could their predecessors. This knowledge has also started leaking out into the general public. I think this would be great, if it weren’t for some people co-opting a very naive sense of designing for their own purposes. Again, please note that here I refer to professional designing.

Three: more sophisticated thinking by designers. Designers who are trained, are trained in ways of thinking and observing as well as just “doing.” Reflecting upon their own activities and then communicating those reflections to others has created positive feedback, which has increased designers’ sophistication.

The big D versus little d design issue is interesting. It seems to me that one is distinguishing here between different senses of the word “design.” I would suggest that there are many other equally important senses that we ought to be aware of and on the distinctions between which we should all try to reach agreement, in order to have more meaningful discussions.

Here are some of the senses of “design” as I see them:

• noun: this or that design (of a thing). Here, “design” is quite close to “model” - a representation of a thing. The design of a thing is not the thing itself. I think of the design of a product (or process or whatever else) as the body of knowledge that explains what the thing is, how it lets other entities attain goals, how it interacts with other things, what it looks like, how it is made/manufactured/implemented, etc.
• noun: a discipline. Perhaps we should call it an interdiscipline. (See Google's definition of "discipline".) Basically, it defines a body of knowledge.
• verb: design as an act. Here, I try to always use designing rather than just “design” to distinguish this sense. Designing is a human activity. It uses design (the body of knowledge) to create designs (models of things).

The distinction of Design as a kind of problem solving versus design (little D) as artifact development sets up warning lights for me. I can think of many cases where artifact development (design) entailed significant Design - that is, artifact development can include a variety of problem solving opportunities, to which Design can be applied. Taking from my own engineering background, given the Design of an automobile, a whole gamut of other things must be Designed to allow the automobile to be developed completely. I worry that distinguishing artifact development from problem solving will confound matters.

Finally, let me toss in one of my own papers - currently only as a draft that has been submitted to a journal - Design as...: thinking of what design might be. In that paper, I suggest that one way of looking at “defining” design(ing) could be to look at how and where it butts up to other things - to find the boundaries between design and other phenomena. Design is often regarded as some kind of problem-solving, for instance, but not all problem-solving requires design. So there’s only partial overlap. What else? There’s design as planning, as creativity, as synthesis, and so on. I would prefer this paper were not cited, but please feel free to read it over.

That’s all for now. ‘nite, all

— Filippo A. Salustri 2007/03/15 23:40

From: Anijo Mathew

Date: February 27, 2007

We are pleased to welcome our new participants in the pre-panel discussion:

Mark Vanderbeeken (web presence); Dr. Filippo Salustri (web presence); and John Nastasi (web presence)

Lets look forward to their inputs to the discussion...

Anijo Mathew/Scott Pobiner

From: Bill Moggridge

Date: February 16, 2007

Dear Anijo and Scott,

I’m looking forward to this panel!

My one-word answer to your provocation “Who killed Design?” is “Ego.”

Cheers, Bill.

Bill Moggridge

From: Anijo Mathew

Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2007 15:24:06 -0600

Dear Prof. Winograd,

We thank you for the critique. It will be very useful for us in the revision of our abstract. In response, I am attaching herewith our reactions which clarifies some of your queries, sets up our position, and most importantly discusses what we envision from the panel. We hope you (as well as Bill Buxton) will review this manuscript and react with the same level of criticism as with our abstract. It is discussions such as this that will enable us to frame the question properly come April 30th.

Thank you and look forward to your responses in this regard,

Anijo Punnen Mathew

Dear Prof. Winograd,

We are extremely excited that you are interested in the panel. It is enlightening as young researchers to have you review our abstract and criticize it. Much of your critique is well received and will be very valuable to us in the revision of our abstract. We also appreciate you sharing your article for Ambidextrous Magazine.

As an update we would like to inform you that Meg Armstrong, of Parsons, The New School for Design has confirmed her attendance. In light of your discussion with David Kelley, we have asked Bill Lucas and Jon Kolko, design chairs to invite Bill Moggridge for the panel. It is unfortunate that Prof. Kelley cannot attend; at the same time it is also exciting to have Mr. Moggridge participate (if he does). Scott is in communication with Thom Mayne at Morphosis, from whom a response is expected in the coming week.

Now to the main point of this email…while we agree on most of your criticism, there are certain points which require clarification and/or discussion. The rest of this write-up will focus on these points and your questions. I hope you will understand that our response to your critique may border on impudence, without an actual intention to do so. It is only meant as a discussion to present our own views on this subject. So kindly bear with us through this rebuttal...

How it all began: Both Scott and I are relatively recent participants in the CHI community and have attended the past 2 CHI Conferences. It was at CHI 2005 that we met other young ‘designers’ and started to discuss the notion of design and its interpretation at CHI. Trained as architects, we’d been taught that design is the purview of an ‘elite core’, however this perspective never sat quite right with either of our opinions of what design could be, indeed what design is. At CHI (as you mention) we saw very many people designing in a plethora of ways. And then there were the many people who ‘claimed’ to be designing, but who failed to address primary issues that we’d been taught were tenets of design. We thought (collaboratively and independently); “why is it that so many people claim ‘design’ as a methodology or procedural component and yet have such drastically differing points of view?” This is where it started. During CHI 2006, in a discussion with Bill Lucas, we presented the idea of a panel – a group of experts who could discuss (and in our mind – argue) the contemporary notion of design, its implications within the CHI community, and the implications of CHI for disciplines outside of CHI.

Scott and I have had many more discussions on this topic, since CHI ‘05. Both Scott and I have very different positions on design and its implications. However we both agreed on one thing…the notion of design belonging to an elite core is an archaic notion – one that must be (and has been) challenged. Today’s information world hands over power to the viewer, the user, the individual. Within this context perhaps there is room for, a new breed of designer – one borne of a complex coalescence of traditional design ideas with contemporary design thinking and technical skills. A breed of designers who understand that design is moving from specific design skill disciplines to an interdisciplinary approach. It seems at least likely, if not inevitable, that these are the kinds of designers who will be more active and successful in the coming decades. Therefore we believe that this is a critical time to address this issue from a definitional standpoint … a time where the boundaries between path finders, problem solvers, implementers, managers, and users are blurring at an ever increasing rate.

Therefore, this topic and theoretical engagement may also be seen as a bridge building opportunity… and an opportunity to find out what “bridges may be too far” (a notion that John T. Bruer interestingly points out in his critique of the relationship between neuroscience and education, and the rift between practice and theory in their context). Similar to Bruer, this issue of Design within a community like CHI raises an interesting theoretical and practical conflict for us, as the organizers of this session, and for many others in our mutual communities (plural assuming that we are all parts of multiple communities).

This leads to the panel and its intentions:

Who killed Design? This strikes me as one of those titles that is intended to be provocative without really meaning anything. A kind of bait and switch. Design has not been killed, but is doing just fine. The word “design” as a term has not been killed. What’s with the violence?

It is true. When we first wrote the abstract, the title was intended to be a provocateur without any real intention or meaning. A bait, as you say. However since the submission of the abstract, Scott and I have revisited the title many times. We played with other ways of presenting it; not losing the provocative nature but not just as an empty container. Each visit brought about different results until recently Scott brought up the idea of a whodunit mystery… To explain this idea, think of the Robert Altman movie – Gosford Park. It’s a whodunit mystery set in early 20th century England. Within what, at first, seems to be a straightforward murder mystery are intertwining threads – threads that have nothing to do with the murder but offer us (the viewers) an understanding of social order, of sexual mores, the declining power of English nobility. The movie is a kaleidoscope of the lives of English nobility wherein the murder itself becomes secondary to the lives of the people living in and visiting the manor. This is how we envision the panel to be – a complex whodunit. Within this, the title ‘Who killed Design?’ may even be a misnomer; it is possible that Design is doing just fine…but as we unravel that, we will have to come to terms with several undertones that establish ‘design’ today. The complexities and the biases associated both with the word and the people who are designers will (hopefully) manifest itself through interaction with the panel. Because we see this panel as an interactive session, the audience will be critical in the discussion of some of these subtleties.

[Also important is to note capital D in the word Design. I will argue (later, in detail) that there is a difference between design and Design.]

So we keep the title. However we are preparing a sub description that is detailed and meaningful enough that people will come to hear about the ‘death’ of Design but leave with the understanding of where it stands today.

Theoretical biases are always there implicitly (why the “become”). It isn’t clear that this has “driven a wedge”. Quite the opposite. The modern attempt to see these disparate disciplines as part of some more generic activity of “design” is pulling them together.

True. Yet we feel that to only acknowledge this is not enough. At least for pedagogical purposes, we think that it is important to address them in discourse with others. If disciplines are coming together, then there must be a strong impetus for growth that comes from the merger. The truth however is that there is not a clear sign that things are merging in cohesive or effective manners. We don’t think that it is enough to say that interdisciplinary interactions lead to ‘good design’ by default. This is where we think terminology has a critical academic value and potentially professional value as well.

We want to believe that Design has always existed primarily outside of the ivory tower. But we don’t believe that is the truth. The evolution of design may have existed primarily outside the ivory tower but until very recently, those who design have always lived in a kind of isolated environment… thus the “ivory tower” quandary that we tried to raise in our abstract. Please do not misunderstand us…we are not saying that tower should exist, nor are we claiming that there should be one work-all solution for design… or Design. It is possible that there never were any ivory towers, nor disciplinary barriers to productive design solutions and theories. We are merely positing that they do exist and asking for participant reactions. For us, at least, the question remains interesting and one potential angle to our discussion.

All the more reason why we believe this discussion should happen in a panel, and not a position paper. A panel by its virtue of difference will present multiple view points and arguments. The inclusion of the audience into the discussion will further enrich the positions. The larger goal of the panel is then to identify what design is to a community like CHI and who a ‘designer’ in CHI is. In the end, if no solutions are provided, at least there is material for thought.

Today, when an individual designs something they must consider the impact of their work on the environment, culture, society, legal system and any other system with which the product of a design process might interact, either intentionally or unintentionally. This is an important point…It is tied to the interdisciplinary issue. The design process as a whole encompasses this scope of concerns and therefore cannot lie within any one discipline. The act of designing includes prototyping, testing etc. It is not a first stage in a waterfall (which is what I assume you mean by “designating”), but a way of talking about the entire innovation/production process.

Here we agree. I believe, that Design with a capital ‘D’ is different from design with little ‘d’. Let me explain – the design of an artifact is merely a subset of Design that identifies, and then solves a problem (in entirety). We often confuse the two terms and believe that the former is all that is required. Design is iterative. In Design, interdisciplinary interaction is important, and often welcomed. However design (with the little ‘d’) is still a proprietary activity…one where the decisions are made solely by a single protagonist, working to develop the artifact, not a solution.

In your critique and your article, you talk about Design – in a holistic manner. Yet much of CHI (in our short exposure) does the opposite. In HCI and many disciplines outside of HCI, design methods have become so stringently concentrated on user studies and heuristic evaluations that the initial problem identification/solving is simply a phase that must be gotten over with (quickly).

To bring in this point of view, we (after submission) suggested the addition of Meg Armstrong, the Chair of the Design and Management program at Parsons The New School for Design as a panelist. It is our hope that her inclusion in the panel will bring the broader point of view of business, management, and design. In other words: Big ‘D’ Design.

The prevailing Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) model of design tends to be a computational model that promotes efficiency over experience It is a caricature of the past of CHI, but there is a significant voice within the community that has been taking a broader view of design.

It may be true that there is a significant voice within CHI that has taken a broader view of design. We have seen it. However a large majority of HCI research is still rational and efficient. The artifact, its design, testing and prototyping takes precedence over socio-political implications of HCI, theory and criticism. Little ‘d’ over Big ‘D’. What’s more, the broader view does not necessarily mean unification in understanding. All the more reason to investigate the term don’t you think?

The power is vested in the people who are doing design, not the “wielders of the word. Often, the best state is to have multiple perspectives which are not consistent but can interact. I don’t think we want to try to have some universal agreement on what “design” means.

Here I disagree. Power is not vested in the people who design…power is vested in the “designers”. Everyone writes. This does not mean that everyone can write. Everyone sings. This does not mean that everyone can sing. Both communication and music are disciplines that have strong theoretical bases. Both writers and musicians require years of rigorous training. If we accept that not everything that is written is good writing; how can we accept that everything that is designed is good design? If writers, musicians, artists all require training before they can produce work, then why should ‘Design’ be left without definition? Design prescribes self evaluation. If that is accepted, then shouldn’t we as designers self evaluate ourselves, our definition of design, our design intentions, and our design processes? We think that this discussion should be a recurring theme in any field that attracts many different kinds of works and points of view (the CHI community seems to be a great example of this).

In short, is it not then appropriate (at least from a pedagogical perspective) that the ‘right stuff’ at CHI be categorized, theorized, and eventually criticized?

The group which feels that design activities, results, and practices should be better represented, not that we should spend more time discussing the abstract idea of design.

The idea of ‘design’ has to be discussed so that we all know what we are talking about. The discussion doesn’t necessarily require a singular definition but as disciplines come together it is all the more important that we speak the same language, have the same nuances, attribute similar meanings… or at least attempt to address the issues that allow us to find commonality. Of course, the results of interdisciplinary work will reveal many differences between two individuals from different fields. Furthermore, there is a chance, that differences will not be acknowledged at all. One wonders how often project “post-mortems” identify interdisciplinary misunderstanding, or how often a project is re-designed because of two significantly different goals (the most common and general is perhaps the technical vs. aesthetic but there are likely to be many others).

At this point, it is important to assert that neither Scott nor I intend this panel to be biased or one sided. In fact, it is exactly your keen criticism and those of the other panelists that we think will make this panel a success. We’d like the panel to address bias directly…to at least accept that everyone has biases and that engaging these biases in discourse can be pedagogically and even professionally advantageous. We wrote up the abstract with the assumption that there would be criticism of our point of view, but that readers would also see this as a starting point rather than a summary statement. Reviewer comments and your criticism have shown us that perhaps we need to be a little less subtle about this and address the goals more clearly. We are working on revised abstract in this regard.

Moreover, we envision that in a time when everyone is able to ‘design’, everyone must have a voice to claim what they see as ‘design’. We want to make this panel truly interactive… We plan to start a wiki as soon as the panelists are on board - where people interested in the panel can start discussing immediately. Also in pipeline is a Flickr group where people can upload images and discussions; an on-site wiki for people to question and or comment. We are constantly discussing on novel ideas of how to involve the entire CHI community in this discussion.

In the end, we want to stress that your participation in this panel is considerably important to us. To both Scott and I, your views on design and the bridging of disciplines have been influential both in the conception of this panel and the vision of what will form a core of the discussion. Each of the panelists will have a different perspective and the actual nuances of what is discussed will be governed by these perspectives.

Looking forward to your response to this write up… Thank you,

Anijo Mathew w/ Scott Pobiner 01.09.07

From: Terry Winograd

Sent: Friday, January 05, 2007 1:36 PM

Subject: Re: CHI 2007 Panel - Who Killed Design? - Invitation

Anijo,

As we discussed this morning, I have read and put comments on the abstract. [See http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/papers/design-panel-TW.doc ] I have also attached a draft (not for distribution) of a short article on related topics I’m writing for Ambidextrous Magazine (comments welcome). [see http://hci.stanford.edu/winograd/papers/ambidextrous-draft.doc ]

I imagine you’ll find the comments on your abstract a bit harsh. I apologize for the tone, and it comes from my desire to really make this a valuable panel. If I thought it was a bad idea overall I’d just say no. My sense after reading more carefully is that I really have a different angle on what the panel should be. Your abstract is centered around the use and meaning of the term “design”. Although this can be a starting point, I think the focus needs to be much more on what people do than on which words they are currently using. I have made various of comments about this in the document. The main thrust is that you need to recognize that the argument of design vs. science (or whatever other terms are used) has been active in CHI for a long time and to be interesting a panel we have to do more than rehash the abstract arguments yet one more time. I trust that Bill and the others will do that, but I would like to see the abstract reflect what will actually happen.

I had email from David Kelley saying that he would not be able to do it but recommending Bill Moggridge. I think Bill would be excellent if you think that is a good substitution.

I look forward to hearing your reactions. –t