Conversation

Notices

1. Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Saturday, 06-May-2023 18:16:19 JST Aral Balkan

   Design is what happens between your ears, not what you see on a piece of paper.

   (The piece of paper is useful for communicating with others about what happens between your ears.)

   #design

   • Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 07-May-2023 17:44:52 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     @aral

     Do co-design next?

     Aral Balkan repeated this.
   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-May-2023 17:44:52 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter I prefer non-colonial #design. Co-design (inviting the ”them” for tea to pick their brains) is definitely better than ethnographic design (hiding in the bushes to observe the “them”) but I’d rather non-colonial design where there’s no “us” and “them”; where people have the tools and skills to design for themselves so “we” (privileged designers working at fancy corporations) don’t design for “them” (the people we profit from) but we all design for ourselves and our own communities.

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Sunday, 07-May-2023 19:03:45 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter Saved your link to read later, thanks.

     Oh and I was implying that the paper (the board, the sticky notes, what-have-you) are the means we communicate with each other during the design process not how we communicate a finished thing to someone else in an “over the fence” manner. (My view of design is holistic; either everyone involved in the making of something is involved or there’s a problem there.)

   • Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Sunday, 07-May-2023 19:03:46 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     @aral

     Yes, with you there (though reckon this reflects how participatory practices have been co-opted by orgs that put up those walls between “inside” and “everyone else”). (This may or may not be of interest… think of it as a draft and not some final statement: https://scottmatter.org/blog/for-radical-compassion/)

     What I was curious about was how, in collaborative practices, the “between your ears” part happens, and whether that might happen differently than when there’s one designer?

   • Aral Balkan (aral@mastodon.ar.al)'s status on Monday, 08-May-2023 16:52:03 JST Aral Balkan

     in reply to

     • Scott Matter

     @scottmatter Hadn’t read that (also popping it on my ever-expanding list, thank you) but yes, indeed, the human mind extends far beyond the brain. And you’re entirely correct that this is fundamental to design. Not just to the process itself but also in determining the character of the things we create and how those things, in turn, shape our reality.

     https://www.wired.co.uk/article/aral-balkan-ethical-design-cyborgs

     https://ar.al/2021/12/18/the-three-laws-of-personal-devices/

     https://cyborgrights.eu/

     #extendedMind #cyborgRights #humanRights #design

   • Scott Matter (scottmatter@aus.social)'s status on Monday, 08-May-2023 16:52:04 JST Scott Matter

     in reply to

     @aral

     Nice.

     I tend to think of the paper and the “between your ears” as parts of a larger whole. Mind, to me (and some of the philosophers whose work I read and try to extend), is different from “brain.”

     Not sure if you’ve read Ursula Le Guin’s essay “Telling is Listening” but she uses this great (visual) metaphor to argue that human communication is more like amoeba having sex than like computers transferring data. The listening shapes the telling shapes the listening and so on, and participants in the conversation are reshaped through it. Same with collaborative working, imho.