What's suitable for each unique condition What of machines and prefabrication? How do they compare? Well, the machine has its limits. We, using handcrafted methods, do things that machines cannot do. Of course, it's not fast like a machine. And in complicated areas like here, things wouldn't go the same using a machine as it would by hand. We use numerous variations of all these connecting and splicing joints. Using a machine, [the wood joints] can all be made uniform, but really, we need to consider whether that's a good thing. It's better to make each mechanism and joint by considering what's suitable for each unique condition. Akinori Abo, Kigumi House Chopped and disfigured contextmachinesconsistency
Interlocking "The art world is highly invested in the idea that you can take an object and set it in a room, and the internal relationships will be so strong and so meaningful that all the kinds of change that take place on the object as a result of its being in a new environment will not critically affect our perception of the object. If that is the given assumption, then the object can be moved from one environment to another without its being critically altered, which then gives rise to the illusion that it can be moved from culture to culture, that it has the ability to transcend its cultural specificity, which in turn gives rise to the ultimate illusion that the object can transcend time. Because what is being claimed is that there exist certain objects isolated and meaningful enough to be transcendent, that they have the power to go on and on, that they are, as it were, timeless. "Well, one of the things that I was becoming involved in at that point in playing artist was the growing suspicion that this breaking down of the edge, the idea of the painting's moving into its environment, was putting the whole heightened rationale of the art object into doubt. There is simply no real separation line, only an intellectual one, between the object and its time environment. They are completely interlocking: nothing can exist in the world independent of all the other things in the world." Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees Deep Interlock contextchangeenvironmentobjects
Object and environment "The marriage of figure and ground—which is how they always term the cubist achievement—of necessity leads to the marriage between painting and environment; essentially they are the same thing, just taking it one step further. When I married the painting to the environment, suddenly it had to deal with the environment around it as being equal to the figure and having as much meaning." Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees context
Overlays The awkwardness of the room itself forced Irwin toward the next phase of his endeavor: each installation from there on would have to arise out of the unique configurations of each new site. As Irwin put it, "Instead of my overlaying my ideas onto that space, that space overlaid itself on me." Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees contextspace
Homebuilders The term homebuilder describes the house as a product that exists independent of its context. This approach would be appropriate if houses floated freely in space, or in some other environment where actual interaction between neighbors was neither possible nor desired. But houses are not meant to exist in isolation, so to think of the individual house as the ultimate outcome of the builder’s craft robs that craft of its broader significance. Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff Speck, Suburban Nation context
Domain-specific vs. Domain-independent UX An Article by Ryan Singer m.signalvnoise.com Domain specific UX means understanding how the supply should fit the demand considering a specific situation and use case. On the other hand, many aspects of UX don’t require knowledge about a particular situation. They‘re based on the common constraints of human sense faculties, memory and cognition or the net of ergonomic factors around the device and the setting where it’s used. These domain independent elements of the UX are important too. Domain independent UX should absolutely pervade the organization. It belongs to the general skill and knowledge of each supplier at their link in the chain. It’s part of learning to be a good designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson etc. uxdesigncontext
The Spoken and the Unspoken An Essay from Field Notes on Science and Nature by Karen L. Kramer What is unspokenResearch questionsQuantitative data collectionAnthropological rapportScan samples, focal follows+4 More The observer effect
What is unspoken Ethnographic studies are distinct from ethological research in other species because we can speak with our subjects and ask them questions. This has tremendous value, but much of what humans do is not spoken, and we also observe, count, and measure. researchux
Research questions From my records, research questions emerged that I never expected when I was making them. notetakingquestions
Quantitative data collection Quantitative data collection involves systematic and repetitive observations on the same set of variables.
Anthropological rapport Accurately capturing how people spend their time is contingent not only on systematic data collection, but also on participants moving in a relaxed and normal manner through their daily activities. Just as primatologists habituate their subjects to their presence, anthropologists first must develop rapport and trust with the communities in which they live. ux
Scan samples, focal follows Scan samples and focal follows are two commonly used behavioral observation methods. During a scan sample, randomly selected individuals are located at specified time intervals, usually every ten to fifteen minutes, and the observer instantaneously records what the participant is doing. Focal follows complement scan samples by documenting the continuous sequence of an individual's activities. During a focal follow, each subject is observed over a period of several hours with each change in activity recorded with a start and stop time.
Multitasking In most traditional societies children help care for their younger siblings. However, it is often the case that a child minding his younger sibling does so out of the corner of his eye while playing with other children. Is this play or child care?
A nested classificatory hierarchy I organized behavioral codes to contain several levels of information. As in this example, if a child is outside playing with friends while minding her two-year-old sister, the activity was coded as 675: the 600 signifies noneconomic activity, the 70 that it is playing, and the 5 that it is playing while in charge of a child. All activities were coded in this way. A nested classificatory hierarchy preserves both detail for future research and flexibility to lump or disaggregate activities for analyses. This method of nesting information carries over into many kinds of coding and classificatory schemes. research
A child's question Because they live so successfully in their world, we expect our subjects to readily explain the strategies that underlie the behaviors we observe. This can be trying, because from their point of view we are asking the obvious, a child’s question.
The research agenda Important connections are often made by accident, outside the bounds of our research agenda. The Usefulness of Useless Knowledge creativity