Introduction
Quite often we have heard people questioning the existence and nature of design. Questions like ‘What is design?’ ‘Does design mean art?’ Is designing an object similar to saying beautification of the object? Some even say, design is common sense; and comes from intuition. If we go a bit deeper into these questions, we get to know answers to many more questions like, what role does Aesthetics play in having a good design? What are the factors to which a design owns is success? Is it pleasure it mere satisfaction? Does good design come from experience of proper understanding of a concept? Do the cognitive faculties of the human mind play a role in deciding the quality of a good design? Should a good design mean ‘globally acceptance’? Does design depend upon the culture and context? Do environments pay some role? How is a priori synthetic judgment possible?
In this essay we will see the relation of beauty, aesthetics, art and design. We will see the factor that makes an object pleasurable, and how it aesthetics is a valuable source for designers. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and excerpts from his essays Critique of Pure reason,Critic of Judgment, Claims of Taste have been put in; in order to give a more explainable answer to these above questions.
Concepts and Knowledge
According to Kant, concepts came from pure understanding and not from experience alone as had been put forward by David Hume. Kant says that all speculation about the nature of things in themselves, beyond the phenomena of perceptual experience , is devoid of all meaning, and cannot even in principle attain the status of knowledge. Kant speaks of metaphysics- that body of knowledge that is both ‘synthetic’ and ‘a priori’ , rather than that body of knowledge which pertains to the fundamental natures of things.
By ‘synthetic’ he means – it involved an actual addition to our knowledge, rather than a mere analysis of the meaning of concepts. By “a priori’ he means – it proceeded independently of perceptual experience, rather than by gathering imperial data. It is derived from some source other than experience. He says that though we cannot know the objects as things in themselves, we must yet be in a position to think them as things in themselves; else we will land in the absurd conclusion that there can be appearance without anything that appears.
Experience as a parameter for design?
Kant agrees that with the empiricists concerning the origins of our knowledge to the extent of granting that “all our knowledge begins with experience” but rejects the thesis that ” it all arises out of experience”; and is experience in other words. One can think as to how far does this hold in design? In order for a particular design to be successful, it is necessary to first launch it; wait for response, then experience the product and then make changes it required. Kant agrees to this ; but he also means to say that after the first few experiences it becomes necessary to understand it thoroughly and then design it. He does not hold that objects need to keep being experienced at; and hoping that a good design will come by.
This is what Kant says in his ‘transcendental method’: It consists in ascertaining various matters of experiences which he takes to be undeniable, and then asking; what do they necessarily presuppose? What must be the case in order for them to obtain? What id the ground of their possibility? According to him, all objects follow the ‘law of causality’; i.e. everything which happens has its cause.
Experience is viewed not simply as an unstructured stream of consciousness; but rather as a unified structure of empirical knowledge if possible. But how? Kant says that it is the mind that itself is not merely passive but active. It structures our experience in such a way that the ‘synthetic a priori’ judgments we have been holding especially in Mathematics and Sciences hold true. According to him, mere experience can give rise to no propositions which are necessarily and universally valid. Those that are; occupy a position of great importance in human thought. These propositions are not derived from experience alone; and so must be traced to some other source, which Kant calls “a priori”.
Prior to Kant the accepted view was that the objects of human knowledge and experience have certain basic forms of ordering and arrangement, which the mind receives from them. Kant reversed this around saying that in point of fact the basic forms of ordering and arrangement of these objects are derived from the nature of the human mind itself. In Philosophy the above is said to be the Copernican Revolution in philosophy.
There are multiple theories on which one could base Experience Design and could try to find answers. With the recent expanse in the domain of experience design, it is necessary that we look towards the other established disciplines for such answers.
