Re: <nettime> don't Disassociate Webdesign (as an aspect of app engineering) from Usability

[Josephine Bosma <jesis@xs4all.nl>]

scotartt wrote:

> I would argue that that is a bit of linguistic sophistry. Sure, there is
> "design" in everything engineering, I must do my "object design" before I
> code it, but the discipline of Design, as it is practiced and as I
> understood to what was being originally referred to by Geert, is NOT the
> same as 'information design' or 'object design'. These are specific
> sub-processes of particular engineering practices.

As I am not able to follow the entire discussion about this topic, my
question might have already been answered or adressed (maybe send all
mails to nettime-bold as they are supposed to Felix and Geert?). Anyway,
what this makes me wonder about is whether the phenomenon Jodi describe
in an interview made in 1997

"There are choices imbedded in software, that are thought about on
mailinglists of designers in California, like which features should be
put in Netscape, how can you make tables. They think it is important to
be able to put two columns of text next to eachother and stuff like
that. Sometimes things slip in like in Netscape 2.0. There you could
have this background that would change all the time, background 1, 2, 3
etc. You could make great movies with that. You could let it run ten
times in a row. They took this out in Netscape 3.0. It was used a lot on
the net. The first part of our Binhex was based quite heavily on it, we
used it a lot. They thought it was a bug. I can't see the bug here, it
was just a free animation effect that was in there. It was threatening
the stability of a certain type of lay out, it was disturbed too easily.
So they took it out."

is not up to date anymore, or less influential. 

Geert seemed to be attacking some kind of incestuous designer circles
that have a misplaced idea of selfimportance as to how the net or web
develops. I wonder whether this attack is based on fact or wishful
thinking. Designers are only one influence in this development, that is
of course true. But is their influence diminishing?

> Well, maybe, anyway. Recently I went to Rome and saw some Carravaggio
> paintings, after this point all subsequent painting lost its meanings for
> me. Even Rothko, who previously I adored, now I see and feel .. nothing.

I hope you feel better soon  ;)


regards


J
*

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