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Posted by dorayme on 06/25/53 12:01
In article <slrnfppuo1.jto.spamspam@bowser.marioworld>,
Ben C <spamspam@spam.eggs> wrote:
> On 2008-01-27, dorayme <doraymeRidThis@optusnet.com.au> wrote:
> > It is a tricky subject
> [...]
>
> One distinction between design and engineering is that design is usually
> supposed to be done earlier in the process and take the form of some
> kind of plan. Engineering is then a matter of filling in the details.
>
> If you ever did woodworking at school they always made you attempt to
> draw a picture of what you were going to make before sawing up any wood.
> This was intended to teach the importance of design and to save wood.
>
> The concept of design then extends to the idea of thinking more about
> things rather than just dashing off the first thing that works. Hence an
> iPod is said to be designed rather than merely engineered because they
> thought about details such as whether it's better to have a big play
> button on the front or to make play an option in a menu system three or
> four levels deep.
What is mostly missed by people who begin thinking about these
matters is a whole complete notion. To me, it simply looks like
they have forgotten to mention the elephant in the room.
What is this elephant? Let me put it simply: the sheer pleasure
of contemplating a cleverly designed object, be it a mouse trap,
a piece of software, or a chemical plant where nothing at all
apart from the functional necessities are present.
In an engineering project, engineering can be everything! There
is nothing left when the engineering is done perfectly. The final
bell on the fight for aesthetic perfection is rung at the same
time as the final bell for the fight for engineering perfection.
They are one and the same bell.
If there is a real distinction between the basic engineered no
frills product and the fancy doodle dandy consumer level finished
marketed product, it is best made *after* it is better understood
what the aesthetics of function is all about. Why would any
serious person want to base their aesthetic thinking on the
superficialities that govern the market place where the crassest
values dominate through the wallet of masses of people led and
fed by forces beyond their control?
Before we talk, assuming we ever do, about the lovely buttons or
lack of them, the lovely whiteness, etc., on iPods, just think
for a moment about the heart of functional aesthetics: the sheer
goodness and cleverness of a good and clever made object. It is
good and clever because it does what it was designed to do
perfectly. This fact is not something extraneous to its beauty.
Rather it is quite the other way around: anything more than what
it strictly needs to carry out its function is a superficial
thing and does not really deserve the name of beauty.
I will just end for now by telling you one of my pet hates - to
indicate how these ideas are not confined to mouse traps. It
makes me mad when I hear film reviewers say of terrible films,
"ah but the photography was so nice and worth going to see blah
blah" and let this influence their assessment. The film is bad
because it does not hold together as a whole, its parts and it
attributes not making a thing of beauty. Its good photography is
not a redeeming feature at all, it is, in fact, another nail in
its coffin. It is perfume that masks a decomposing dead rat.
--
dorayme
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