Charles Eames, as interviewed in 1972 by “L. Amic” of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. Eames’ Zen-like answers amount to a thorough and timeless definition of design. What stands out to me is the exchange about constraints: “Does design admit constraints?” the interviewer asks. Eames says, of course, design depends on constraints. When the interviewer asks, “What constraints?” Eames begins his reply by saying, “The sum of all constraints.”

What is your definition of “design?”

A plan for arranging elements in such a way as to best accomplish a particular purpose.

Is design an expression of art (an art form)?

The design is an expression of the purpose. It may (if it is good enough) later be judged as art.

Is design a craft for industrial purposes?

No— but design may be a solution to some industrial problems.

What are the boundaries of design?

What are the boundaries of problems?

Is design a discipline that concerns itself with only one part of the environment?

No.

It is a method of general expression?

No— it is a method of action.

Is design a creation of an individual?

No— because to be realistic one must always admit the influence of those who have gone before.

…or a creation of a group?

Often.

Is there a design ethic?

There are always design constraints and these usually include an ethic.

Does design imply the idea of products that are necessarily useful?

Yes— even though the use might be surely subtle.

It is able to cooperate in the creation of works reserved solely for pleasure?

Who would say that pleasure is not useful?

Ought form to derive from the analysis of function?

The great risk here is that the analysis may not be complete.

Can the computer substitute for the designer?

Probably, in some special cases, but usually the computer is an aid to the designer.

Does design imply industrial manufacture?

Some designs do and some do not—depending on the nature of the design and the requirements.

Is design an element of industrial policy?

Certainly; as in any other aspect of quality, obvious or subtle, of the product. It seems that anything can be an element in policy.

Ought design to care about lowering costs?

A product often becomes more useful if the costs are lowered without harming the quality.

Does the creation of design admit constraint?

Design depends largely on constraints.

What constraints?

The sum of all constraints. Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem—the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible—his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints—the constraints of price, of size, of strength, balance, of surface, of time, etc.; each problem has its own peculiar list.

Does design obey laws?

Aren’t constraints enough?

Ought the final product to bear the trademark of the designer? Of the research office?

In some cases, one may seem appropriate. In some cases, the other, and certainly in some cases both.

What is the relation of design to the world of fashion (current trends)?

The objects of fashion have usually been designed with the particular constraints of fashion in mind.

Is design ephemeral?

Some needs are ephemeral. Most designs are ephemeral.

Ought it to tend towards the ephemeral or towards permanence?

Those needs and designs that have a more universal quality will tend toward permanence.

To whom does design address itself: to the greatest number (the masses)? to the specialists or the enlightened amateur? To a privileged social class?

To the need.

Can public action aid the advancement of design?

The proper public action can advance most anything.

After having answered all these questions, do you feel you have been able to practice the profession of “design” under satisfactory conditions, or even optimum conditions?

Yes.

Have you been forced to accept compromises?

I have never been forced to accept compromises but I have willingly accepted constraints.

What do you feel is the primary condition for the practice of design and its propagation?

Recognition of the need.

What is the future of design?

(No answer)

(transcript via Brimstone and Treacle.)

Slides summarizing my doctoral design and research practice. Presented at “iMAPpening,” a group show featuring my colleagues in Media Arts and Practice at the USC School of Cinematic Arts.

Nina K. Simon‘s excellent paper, “Going Analog: Translating Virtual Learnings into Real Institutional Change,” describes how designers can approach integrating new user behaviors into existing ones — and why it’s often essential to do so. Simon argues that many designs fail to take hold because they ask users to adopt new practices or patterns of behavior that don’t in and of themselves add value to a particular experience. People are naturally reluctant to move outside of their accustomed flows, especially in well-defined spaces like museums, libraries, and schools. But what happens when a new technology comes along that promises great returns for users while simultaneously demanding some kind of additional input from them — in effect asking them to do step out of their flow and do something that they previously hadn’t done? Responding to this question, Simon provides the elegant example of the Bibliotheek Haarlem Oost, a branch library in the Netherlands that has developed a creative “in the flow” method for getting its patrons to tag the books in its collection:

Tagging has huge theoretical value to museums and libraries as a way to allow users to create folksonomies around institutionally-held collections, and there’s a clear mission connection for institutions whose goal is to engage visitors with collections and learning. While many museums are ably exploring the world of tagging on-line, no one has figured out how to make it work in the onsite visitor experience. Tagging could be very useful onsite if there were a way to access the tags and use them to discover artifacts of interest. Ideally, there would be a complete feedback loop where you would then be able to assign tags to objects as you view them in the galleries, thus creating more data for new visitors walking in the door.

What I’m describing maps to a complicated set of inputs and outputs. At the input (performing the tagging), visitors while onsite would need a way to mark individual exhibits with keywords. Then, on the output (using tags to access content of interest), visitors would need a way to scan the keywords at any exhibit, see linked related exhibits, and receive directional information to find the other exhibits. I can think of several ways to do this, and they all have long, painful lists of behavior changes associated with them.

The library at Haarlem Oost wanted to do this same thing – to allow patrons to tag the books they’d finished so they could be displayed on shelves and in the database for others to find books they might enjoy. But Hanrath didn’t come up with a clunky technology with lots of required behavior changes and instruction sets. They did something very, very clever. They installed more book drops.

The library created a book drop for a set of predefined tags (boring, didn’t read it, great, funny, exciting, good for kids, etc.). They also created shelves for the individual tags. When patrons return books, they place them on the shelves that appropriately categorize their books. Because the majority of books in the Dutch library system have RFID tags, the shelves were enabled with RFID readers that scan the books and add the tags to the books’ digital entries in the library database. The only behavior change required is for the patron to shelve his or her books in categories, and the benefit on the output side (the tags appearing in the library on-line catalogue) is immediate.

No patron would call the activity of putting their books in book drops ‘tagging,’ and that’s a good thing. There’s little concern here about barriers to use, educating the visitor on how to participate, or even significant infrastructure or support costs. The feedback loop is there, and it works because it’s a clever, simple distillation of the core idea of tagging. (Archimuse)