For me this was the most useful challenge and learning experience of watching Luke work through his Masters. My own research was initially driven by a desire for practice-led research to be more easily transferable, relevant and therefore asked practitioners to more explicitly account for how their research experience contributes to the broader practice community. So for me the fact that Luke’s research practice seems to almost purposefully avoid clearly articulately it’s objectives and outcomes was at first problematic.

But as my research has developed to have a more design-led understanding of how practitioners may chose to learn from each other (by exploring for themselves the potential relevance of another’s exercise)…I have also observed the significant contribution Luke’s research presents.

There seems no denying that Luke’s research resonates with others – the themes he adopts (disenchantment with industry etc) and the bare, painful honesty with which he articulates his research process ultimately presents a very engaging way to draw an audience in. Cameron’s comment that Luke held himself up as like the Woody Allen of practitioner-research is I think an apt analogy, because it points to the fact that even though his work could not be more introspective, more self-referential, more obtuse in its specific outcomes…one is immediately drawn in to the narrative…a narrative that on some level (and in totally different ways) resonates with all of us. To me this is the substantial achievement of his dissemination practice. I think he has modelled a process — antithetical to yours and mine — that resonates with many designers and to me is ultimately very audience centred.

So I agree with you — your personalities may be different and your intentions disparate — but at the end of the day the practitioner-led nature of your projects have simply determined appropriate but alternative ways to engage different kinds of designers.

While working at Allen&Unwin, a couple of editors and designers went to a large printer outside Melbourne that the company often used. On that trip, I learnt that every time you use an embellishment (foil, UV Spot varnish, embossing, etc) on a cover design, they generate an extra couple of hundred covers for every 5000 books, because each time the cover has to go through the extra embellishment process, there is greater margin for error. This knowledge changed the way I practice. Before this, I’d add cover embellishements whenever possible – it’s fun being able to play around with varnishing and embossing. Generally, without consideration of the actual design, any biography or mainstream commercial fiction gets foil (usually demanded by the Marketing department, not the designer). However now I ask myself whether it will really add much to the cover, to the design, to embellish. If not, I refuse to add on just for the sake of being able to.

On the same trip, (you’d have to contact ABC books to varify the details of this annecdote) I was told that the production manager of ABC books figured out the most common paper sheet size used by Australian printers and based on that information, came up with a page size for kids and gift books that generated the least amount of paper waste. It is, apparently, now the standard size they use.

So these are two examples of how a small amount of education AROUND design (specifically, in the printing industry) can lead to more socially responsible practice, in a small way. If everyone adopted little shifts in the way they practice and reconsider their responsibility as a designer, we’d be a step closer to a ’socially responsible industry’.

your work is about exchanges and interconnections and this doesn’t quite convey the richness… perhaps when you are cycling home or doing something completely different you could think about other/new ways to say this?

laurene

From Laurene’s comment, what I get is that she questions whether clients can be also audiences. And, yes, I believe that they can. And I think I am beginning to say in my post is that designer is also an audience. So, there are ‘client-as-audience’ and ‘designer-as-audience’. Is there a clear-cut ‘audience’ then (ie those who aren’t clients or designers). Does it matter? But returning to my research (the core of); am I making things sound more simplistic than it is, when I use definitions (therefore semantics) such as ‘client’ and ‘audience’ and ‘designer’? Why am I doing this, and to what purpose?

In all the projects undertaken, perhaps what I have discovered is that there are no clear-cut roles/definitions. In Ross House, the community and management were the same, just as client were audiences. In Dear John, the designers and clients were the same.

So, to clarify, I’m not trying to create clear definitions of roles between client, designer and audience. But what I believe I am doing, is investigating what happens in the relationship between the variety of people (or hybridity of roles), who can be client-as audience, designer-as client, client-as audience etc etc. What I may also be looking at, is revealing how the hybridity of roles affect the designing process.

Perhaps this is another obstacle that I have felt when engaging with user-centred design, and less so in participatory design. In user-centred design, the roles between user and designer is clear cut. Very black and white. In participatory design, I observe a move in blurring the boundary between them. There is hardly any mention of ‘client’ in such literature though, and that is the nature of an academic context as opposed to one based in ‘industry’.

one of the challenging things in research is the way in which things seem to be always interconnected. this becomes a challenge when we are trying to make sense of things…

what you seem to be doing here is interesting. it seems that you are starting to map your way through the various methods and approaches to research in order to be able to articulate what the practice of design is, and how designers engage with audiences.

in this text you propose that designers engage with the audience through their conversation with their clients. does this mean that the client is the audience? does the client reprepresent the audience? which makes me wonder – how much do they know about the ultimate audience?

is it possible for a designer who is at least twice removed from the audience ( that is if we think that they aren’t the audience and the client is the ultimate audience either – in this case audience = end user/purchaser/engager with the designed artefact/system or concept)… see it just gets messy…

who is the audience?

as you work through these issues – what is it that you are trying to make sense of? is it what designers do that links them to the audience? are you endeavouring to show that designers do more than just model themeslves in their designed outcomes?

in your text i am reading about the various relationships within design (people to people, people to artefacts) and how designers negotiate and manage these.

do these relationships and processes need to be named?

laurene

We should chat further on this one.
M