#ccdn 271

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CCDN 271: Assignment Two - Abstract

As we progress within the 21st century a majority of designers have turned to the convenience of digital devices and away from analogue. Though there are many apparent advantages to this change away from analogue design, for example digital editing and photoshop, there are several over-looked advantages of using digital-devices to further progress design. Within this study, I will identify and observe the practice of generative design through digital devices and the implications of its use. This practice is intended to help to cope with the rising complexity of designs and incorporates the use of computer-generated code to create and replicate design through the implication of algorithms, while also providing new and improved ways to expand the creation of design. I will use cases from various case-studies including the popular video-game ‘Terraria’, a sandbox game which heavily incorporates the use of Generative Design, an excerpt from ‘The Journal of the Operational Research Society’, specifically ‘Knowledge-Based Design and Simulation Environment (KBDSE): Foundational Concepts and Implementation’, and an excerpt from ’New Naturality: A Generative Approach to Art and Design’. Each of these sources will provide me with unique and contrasting views on the use of Generative Design and its implications, to further expand my knowledge and the final results of this study. I hope that my findings will be valuable in the further development and recognition of Generative Design as a significant design practice. This recognition will lead to the further use of Generative Design and progress it’s evolution to create additional, more advanced practices and techniques which in turn will allow us as designers to achieve brand new limits in our work in Design.

References:

  Terraria

Re-Logic

(n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2012, from Terraria: http://www.terraria.org/

  New Naturality: A Generative Approach to Art and Design Celestino Soddu Leonardo , Vol. 35, No. 3 (2002), pp. 291-294 Published by: The MIT Press Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1577119

  Knowledge-Based Design and Simulation Environment (KBDSE): Foundational Concepts and Implementation

Jerzy W. Rozenblit, Jhyfang Hu, Tag Gon Kim and Bernard P. Zeigler

The Journal of the Operational Research Society , Vol. 41, No. 6, Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems. Part II. Simulation and Scheduling (Jun., 1990), pp. 475-489

Published by: Palgrave Macmillan Journals on behalf of the Operational Research Society

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2583032

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CCDN 271: Abstract & Argument.

CCDN 271: Assignment 2 Abstract and Argument. Nick Holder: 300245359

Everyday Design vs Everyday Living: In the 21st Century.

As people, living in the 21st century, realise the negative impact their lifestyle could be having on our environment, they are finding that having fewer possessions is a more economical and environmentally friendly way to live and can still facilitate all the needs of day to day living.

In this project I will research Everyday design in the 21st Century, looking at the need for products that allow for and inspire adaptation and multiple uses and also how consumers are everyday designers themselves who use their resourcefulness to create personalised, economical systems, which benefit both them and the environment they inhabit.

I will argue that by looking at how people interact with their possessions, and what systems they employ during daily routine, everyday objects can be designed to be more interactive and have more interchangeable uses.

Firstly I will look at a study by Ron Wakkary and Leah Maestri, of Simon Fraser University, The Resourcefulness of Everyday Design, 2007. This study looks at the role family members have as designers in their own homes. This will help me to understand the ways in which people adapt their surroundings to suit their needs and also what objects are most necessary in daily life. Next I will look at examples of contemporary everyday design, which are already beginning to incorporate multiple use, adaptability and personalisation and see wether they are having a positive impact on our day-to-day lives. I will also be looking at other resources, as I find them during the assignment, in order to strengthen my argument.

By looking at both how people interact with design and also how designers try to create products that promote sustainable and more efficient living, my study will allow me to understand how we should approach designing products for the everyday so that they are efficient and user friendly and have as little negative effect on our earths delicate environment as possible.

References: Wakkary, R., & Maestri, L. (2007). The resourcefulness of everyday design. In Proceedings of ACM Creativity and Cognition 2007 (pp. 163–172). New York: ACM Press.

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Assignment 2 - Abstract (Why Are Emotions Important To Everyday Design?)

As design becomes a part of our everyday lives, society tends to ignore the emotional attachment’s that develop along with it. Researching a selection of writers from both designers and psychologists, my study will research what emotions are affected with everyday design, (looking at both negative and positive connotations afflicted on society) and how they are influenced.

I have chosen to research the emotional attachment of design as it is a relatable subject to everyone, yet obscured to a point where we find it irrelevant to comprehend.

My study will aid in revealing how human emotions are affected with the everyday designs that surround society from both a communal and personal view. Coinciding with this, the study will provide a broader view on consumerism and assist fellow designers with what aspects to produce to create a memorable and ‘emotional’ product for customers.

Primarily I looked into Donald Norman’s ‘Emotional design: Why we love (and hate) everyday things’ and ‘Design and Emotion’ the collection of papers from editors Deana McDonagh, Paul Hekkert, Jeroen van Erp and Diane Gyi given at the 3rd Design and Emotion Conference 2002. These readings provided an overview of what makes design emotionally attachable to society, with Donald Norman relating personal experiences of design with emotion (Norman, 2003), to Sheilla Baker (an author of one of the many collected papers within ‘Design and Emotion’) who viewed the overall aesthetics being the major factor (Baker, 2003). In addition to these readings will be ‘Emotional Driven Design’, by Bahar ŞENER (ŞENER, 2008), and ‘Building Emotions in Design’ by Crosley Lee (Lee, 2003) allowing a solution to how to create ‘emotional’ design and why the very element is necessary.

  Works Cited

Baker, S. (2003). Colour and emotion in design. In P. H. Deaner McDonagh, Design and Emotion (p. 188). London: CRC Press.

Lee, C. (2003). The Design Journal. Building Emotions in Design , 35-45.

Norman, D. A. (2003). Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things. In D. A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things (p. 4). New York: Basic Books.

ŞENER, B. (2008). Mimarlık Fakültesi dergisi. Emotional Driven Design , 127.

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CCDN 271 - Assignment One

NOTE: While I had this assignment in on time within the R-drive I forgot to upload it to my blog until now, OOPS. Hopefully this is not an issue.

CCDN 271 Assignment One

Generative Design

Terraria is an action-adventure/role-playing video game, released by independent game studio Re-Logic. Created by Finn (Tiy) Brice and Andrew (Redigit) Spinks, the game presents the player with no apparent objective, yet gives them a choice by presenting them with a truly vast amount of possibilities and things to-do and the freedom to approach them as they so desire. Being a video-game, Terraria is an obvious example of generative design, as modern video-games are nearly all driven by and created through a multitude of algorithmic principles, yet I feel that Terraria excels as an example, for reasons I will discuss within this analysis.

Terraria houses many differences from most commercial, story-driven video-games available today. Firstly the amount of freedom, dispelling the possibility of driven, cinematic storytelling is a feature that is commonly avoided, yet I feel it’s main, most distinctive feature is in the world-creation. The player creates a unique character or avatar that keeps a hold of all his /her possessions on their person, yet whenever the player creates a new world to explore, the world is generated randomly through the use of algorithmic principles and will always be new and exciting. This practice is commonly referred to as procedural generation. The term, according to Wikipedia, ‘refers to content generated algorithmically rather than manually. Often, this means creating content on the fly rather than prior to distribution. This is often related to computer graphics applications and video game level design’ (Wikipedia).  The use of procedural generation in Terraria is a fantastic example of generative design as the world’s that are being created are not a product of human aesthetic preference, but instead a generated model created through algorithmic  principles with random parameters. This is within reason of course as each individual model used in-game, e.g. a grass block or a tree, are a product of human aesthetic preference, but the game engine decides how they should be arranged within the world. I am under the opinion that adopting computational design practices, which Terraria is a part of, is beneficial to the development and ‘evolution’ of design. The ability and decision to ‘shift the focus of design from formal’ human ‘considerations’ to these mathematical and natural laws and forces allows us as designers to achieve new levels of design that we may otherwise never discover.

It is already so that a variety of amazing design, whether it be an image, a game or other has come from Generative Design, and now that I have proven it as a product of this practice, I believe that Terraria is such an example. As more designers begin to look into the possibilities that this practice presents us with I hope that Terraria will be looked back upon as a stepping-stone in this journey.

  References

(n.d.). Retrieved March 25th, 2012, from Terraria: http://www.terraria.org/

Wikipedia. (2012, March 6th). Procedural generation. Retrieved March 25th, 2012, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procedural_generation#See_also

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Assignment 1: Everyday Design

Selle, G. (1984). There Is No Kitsch, There Is Only Design! Design Issues, 1(1), 41-52.

 The anonymous design of the everyday has become so much a part of our lives we cease to notice its existence, when in fact it is one of the most important and relevant forms of design. With a growing focus on consumerism and the constant evolution of mass production, it has become increasingly difficult to determine the good design from the bad and so the question is asked, is there such a thing as a definable good and bad taste, or is it simply all design?

 Everyday objects crowd our lives and reflect our personalities, Gert Selle believes that bad taste does not exist and all design stems from already existing everyday ideas and objects. There is No Kitsch, There is Only Design! Is a review of the “Genial Design of the ‘80s: Objects of Desire and Daily Use” exhibition, in which everyday beautiful objects were displayed without condemnation of consumption or indoctrination of the users. He expresses his belief in everyday design for the masses as it portrays “realization of a dream of luxury, beauty, belongingness, shelter, adventure, individuality and cultural identity.” (Selle G. pg.41).

 He widely critiques the stigma that surrounds everyday design and the designers who consider it bad taste. He believes that these avant garde designers draw their inspiration from the objects of mass design in an attempt to better already functioning and proven designs, forgetting that the mass consumer deals with these beautiful items not ironically but seriously. Everyday objects can sometimes come to mean the most and to symbolize and portray certain elements of ones personality and routine. His writing is backed up with a variety of photographic sources displaying a variety of somewhat amusing objects and interior layouts which some people would perhaps question the levels of taste.

 To Selle it is important to stress that the true meaning of design is the design for all, the design most used, most purchased and most loved, steering away from pretentious design ideals fitted only to a certain small number of people with elevated levels of taste. It shows an evolution of society with everyday design progressing in sync with social change, affected by what is happening the world around us. He gives a concise overview of everyday design with an amusing twist, condemning those who look down on everyday designers.

Since the publishing of this article in 1984, everyday design has continued to rapidly evolve and become more and more personal, they are the objects designed so well that we do not view them as design but a necessary foundation in our lives, something that we do not notice until it has changed or is no longer there. Taste and design, like beauty, is perhaps better referred to as in the eye of the beholder as peoples’ everyday and sometimes mundane items, are in a way an extension of themselves.

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Assignment 1 - The Everyday

“As a result everything can be regarded as part of our popular culture, because pop does not only pick up elements of our everyday life, our whole everyday life goes pop.” (Duschlbauer, 2005) Inclusive with the words of Thomas Dushlbauer is that of everyday design, stating all design can become everyday design as it has the potential to become a part of our everyday lives.

In late 2003, acclaimed design critic (Ted, 2012)Donald A. Norman released his book, ‘Emotional design: Why we love (and hate) everyday things’, coinciding with this was, ‘Design and Emotion’ an edited collection of papers given at the 3rd Design and Emotion Conference 2002, released by the four editors; Deana McDonagh, Paul Hekkert, Jeroen van Erp and Diane Gyi . Both books brought up individual perspectives about what attributes of everyday design make them lovable (and despicable), with Norman bringing up the memories and experiences of the design with its owner while ‘Design and Emotion’ singling out the aesthetic and colour of the design itself.

When explaining a collection of teapots Donald Norman owns and loves, he mentions “Which one of these teapots do I usually use? None of the above. I drink tea every morning. At an early hour, efficiency comes first.” (Norman, 2003) So why own the teapots? Norman later explains that each teapot have their own aspects, giving them each a purpose to design. His first teapot, the ‘Nanna teapot’ excels in Visceral design. The appearance of this teapot is what has made it emotionally connected to Norman, with him stating “I so enjoy its appearance, especially when filled with the amber hues of tea, lit from beneath by the flame of its warming candle.” The second teapot (a tilting teapot which allowed users to determine how strong they wanted their tea by the angle the teapot was tilted) was associated with Behavioural design, where both pleasure and effectiveness of use is key to the design. Finally his third teapot example was Reflective design, how rationalized and intellectualized the product was and its ability to tell a story no matter how functional it was, stating, “It isn’t particularly beautiful, and it’s certainly not useful, but what a wonderful story it tells!” Donald Norman’s views on the emotional connection to everyday design are something we can all relate to. Everything we own from its aesthetics to its individual meaning we keep, as they have a Visceral, Behavioural or Reflective aspect to it,

Sheila Baker’s opinions in ‘Design and Emotion’ on everyday design are similar, although they rely more with colours and their relation with emotions. According to Baker, colours in ancient times were symbolic with great meaning. She states “Colour is a fast track to emotion: a hot line to instinct. It is powerful, evocative and moodchanging. It has energy, Colour is sensual. When the sense are involved the effect is heightened.” (Baker, 2003) with it having often the first impact as well as the most memorable and lasting effect within society. Acknowledging Sheila Baker’s statements we see that colour’s role in everyday design has a huge impact on society. The market today holds a countless amount of products each with an array of colours to choose from not only for variety, but reason being that designers know colour has an emotional attachment for the customers who buy it.

Overall both ‘Emotional design: Why we love (and hate) everyday things’ and ‘Design and Emotion’ revealed an obscured emotional dimension. From the Visceral, Behavioural and Reflective aspects to the colourful aesthetics of products they are all a part of everyday design, which we as society tend to overlook.

Works Cited

Baker, S. (2003). Colour and emotion in design. In P. H. Deaner McDonagh, Design and Emotion (p. 188). London: CRC Press.

Duschlbauer, T. (2005). Searching for the 'everyday'. In M. S. Laboratory, What People Want (Populism in Architecture and Design) (pp. 180-181). Basel: Birkhauser - Publishers for Architecture.

Norman, D. A. (2003). Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things. In D. A. Norman, Emotional Design: Why we love (or hate) everyday things (p. 4). New York: Basic Books.

Ted. (2012, March 22). Don Norman: Cognitive scientist and design critic. Retrieved March 22, 2012, from Ted: http://www.ted.com/speakers/don_norman.html

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CCDN 271. Assignment 1

Critical Design – How critical design is influencing change in society?

 (I have analyzed each designer’s portions of the magazine article to gain a greater holistic view to critique the source.)

  The exhibition – Designing critical Design was held in the Z33 House of Contemporary Art in Belgium from March 4th 2007 until June 3rd 2007. This exhibition housed examples of critical design from like minded designers Jurgen Bey, Martí Guixé and Dunne & Raby which were published along with other works of them and their respective studios in the magazine DAMN° Z33.

 The source is relevant to the subject of critical design and how it is able to cross “the borders between contemporary art and design and reveal developments in society and scientific phenomena.” (Bettens, W., Demyttenaere, S., Firmin, E., & Ledoux, P., 2007, p. 2) The designers in the article are all of like-minded approaches in their philosophy towards design. The designers philosophies on how design is developing around a culture and society which is not being challenged is one that interest me, and is a significant argument that should be addressed in todays ‘ever changing’ society.

 The project “The World According to Bey” is a work where Bey “provokes a micro-think process about the values of design itself.” (Jurgen Bey - Bettens, W., Demyttenaere, S., Firmin, E., & Ledoux, P., 2007, p. 3)  He takes elements of human progression and questions ways in how we can improve the way we are moving forward as a society. By encompassing works of others in a unique perspective of how he feels society could work if thinking was applied to all aspects, which people barely think about. And how these can help improve and utilize everything to its full potential. These are interesting views in how design and critical design can reveal developments in our society through thinking alone.

 Martí Guixé describes himself as an ex-designer as he feels it allows “more freedom of expression and activity” (Martí Guixé - Bettens, W., Demyttenaere, S., Firmin, E., & Ledoux, P., 2007, p. 13) to what he is able to do. His thought provoking exhibitions are ones that test the perceptions of everyday people and offer a differing view on the culture of products and how the regular industrial designer thinks. His philosophy on calling works that defy boundaries of design ‘projects’ is an interesting way of blurring the line between contemporary art and design.

 Dunne & Raby as a design collective “explore ways of relocating the aims to develop effective tools for disseminating conceptual design proposals that actively engage people’s imaginations.” Dunne & Raby (as cited in Designing Critical Design - JURGEN BEY– MARTÍ GUIXÉ – DUNNE & RABY , 2007) Their exhibitions focus on human characteristics and relate to deeper thinking of how we develop as a society, and how critical design tries to push the general populous to think differently. Their views are that we are not challenged enough in today’s modern society.

 The arguements of all the designers spoken about, and to in the magazine article offers a view into critical design. The insight of these designers helps me in the topic of critical design and the angle I am taking on it. I am focusing on peoples perception to change and how critical design helps to develop and challenge those in the general population as there has not been a significant design movement since before the millennium. I feel this source was of great value as it offered insights into the world of critical designers, how some of the more renowned critical designers think and how critical design is trying to push society forward.

    Bettens, W., Demyttenaere, S., Firmin, E., & Ledoux, P. (2007, March 4th) . Designing Critical Design – JURGEN BEY– MARTÍ GUIXÉ – DUNNE & RABY. DAMN° Z33 - DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE & ART MAGAZINE. (Publisher DAMnation Ltd.)

(Web address http://www.z33.be/sites/default/files/15_DCD_DAMndegmagazine_0.pdf)

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Assignment One, Decisions

Contrary to my previous ideas and decisions, I have decided to look upon Generative Design for my first assignment. I am considering using a popular video-game called Terraria as my source, though I am still unsure of this. I will press further on this later.

Week 12: Generative Design

Generative design broadly includes the myrad new forms of digital design that are driven by algorythmic principles rather than simply human aesthetic preference. In week 12 we will look closely at this growning trend today, as most popularly recognised in programming languages such as Processing, towards adopting computational design practices. We will also look at the historic context of the desire to shift the focus of design from formal considerations to following 'rules' established by natural forces or mathematical laws. KEYWORDS: generative design, computational design, digital design, digital fabrication.