Reading Notes
Chapter Seven – pgs 208-224
A New Paradigm: Designing Experiences, Not Objects
The designer takes on the
traditional role of tradesman, in addition to those of artist and communication
strategist.
Software made creation an
output much faster. Type is now easier to manipulate. It allowed anyone to
become a designer.
The
Insight of Marshall McLuhan
1.
Medium is the message – media change
the world around them by effects that supersede the very content they seek to
communicate. The impact of television on how we see the world is bigger than
the content of any single program. Many use the cell phone to get feelings to
incite emotions that are otherwise absent in our daily lives.
2.
hot and cool media – our sensory
experiences with differing levels of message definition under various
technologies. Radio and film are hot because they are clearer and more
information-rich. They require less sensory participation to complete the
message. Political cartoons and television are cool because they require more
involvement from the user. His definitions may be out of date today.
3.
Acoustical space – pre-literate,
oral traditions in communication. There is less mediation with hearing than
with sight
4.
Global village – electronic media gives
people equal access to public information and re-establishes the simultaneity
of the pre-literate acoustic culture. Mentions the JFK-Nixon televised debate.
A
Convergence of Media
Convergence – a move
from media-specific content to content that flows across multiple media
channels; the interdependence of media systems.
Remediation – is the
process through which the characteristics and approaches of competing media are
imitated, altered, and critiqued in a new medium – the representation of one
medium in another.
Complexity
and Experience
Contemporary design problems
are increasingly complex and defined in terms of experiences rather than
objects.
An experience must have a
beginning and end. An experience is composed of parts that are distinct but
that flow from one to another without interruption. An experience may be
described in terms of a quality or unity by which we name it, and thus recall
it long after it has happened. An experience has a pattern and a structure of
alternating between doing and undoing, which should be balanced.
(I’m not going to read the
upside down type on the fig. 7.11 concept map)
