[IxDA Discuss] Art or (Rocket) Science

[Peyush Agarwal]

I must mildly digress here. Back in school, we designed a T-shirt that said "Architecture IS rocket science!" to assert that designing architecture is an activity as complex and multi-interdependent (creative English?) as rocket building. That all the seeming art that sometimes outsiders see actually requires a large science prerequisite in order to create design alchemy.

I feel the same way about Interaction Design, though the field hasn't had a few thousand years to get technology down (vs. building with bricks and stone) or even a couple of hundred years (vs. building in glass and concrete). The activity is already reasonably complex, but not only because there are so many user-facing variables, but a lot because of fast-changing, highly variable building material (technology and tools). And it decidedly requires a person to be as 'balance-brained' with equal use of left and right hemispheres as architecture.

So I'd say I consider myself artist/craftsman-scientist! 

-Peyush

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com [mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of David malouf
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2007 2:02 PM
To: discuss at lists.interactiondesigners.com
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Art or (Rocket) Science

Definitely not scientist!
artist-practitioner works. ;)

Seriously, I think the issue is that there IS magic going on in
design. while it can be informed by measurable means, it is still a
product of neurons interacting in unexplainable ways. We use process
as a means of guiding creativity so that we make deadlines and
address the measurable, but in the end design is not scientific. Not
when it is done really well. My favorite designs come from spirits &
souls, not from calculators.