Two Reviews of Thackara’s In the Bubble
Read two reviews of John Thackara’s In the Bubble. The first in Icon magazine’s August issue1. This I liked:
In a section that I hugely enjoyed, he questions the prevalence of design in many areas of human activity, instead of promoting “the kinds of experimentation that can emerge, unplanned and unexpected from wild, design-free ground.”
So design can be too rational, too rigorous? Otherwise, design is often explained as emphasizing experimentation. Is this a different kind of experimentation, or just more free experimentation?
The second review was by Damien Newman in the July issue of Design in Flight. Passages I liked:
Thackara’s book asks us to develop a design mindfulness of the consequences for designing with rather than for people. He explains design is what human beings do, backed up by Herb Simon’s well known quote starting with ‘Everyone designs’ [from The Sciences of the Artificial I think], and in no way suggests that we should stop designing, but perhaps to stop designing so thoughtlessly, and that we still need systems, platforms and services that enable us to interact and share more effectively and successfully.
And:
I’m reminded of [a] quote from Norman Foster, who concluded in an essay in 1969 the following: “In many ways, the design process is probably one of our cheapest commodities. It allows us the scope to explore many alternatives and possibilities before making any commitment in reality. All too often, however, it is the subject of short-cuts; an unnecessary fringe benefit to which lip service is occasionally paid, or a luxury for those prestige occasions. The results we suffer surround us, and the loss at all levels is entirely our own.”
Recognizing that software development is design, perhaps we would acknowledge that the ‘commitment in reality’ is soft, and that we can always explore alternatives, reverting them, or evolving them, when they prove to not work. There are few activities in software that are cheap but tell us valuable things about the system developed. Unlike in physical design, where a cardboard model can speak volumes.
1 The August issue of Icon hasn’t appeared online yet, so I can’t link, and as I tore out just the portion I wanted to quote, depending on being able to find it online later, I don’t know who the reviewer was.