Blog 4-Trevor Brooks

In the essay the term “Tacit” is a concept that designed objects, or for the most part any physical object create different “meaningful” uses that the designersthemselves may not have intended when the product was being designed in the first place. It is also apart of the belief that designers when designing a product have to take the idea that the users will create their own meaning with these objects and should design from that perspective. An example of this definition is a fish tank, overall when this was designed it may have been created in the basic thoughts of using it as a mere fish tank, to the user though it may serve as a metaphor for the workplace, or as a means of escape during a stressful day.

Complementing
Essentially this design method is what we see in the everyday media. The products are designed in context to the other ideas and concepts. There is little originality that is put into the design, instead they focus on following on what is already established and hoping to ride on its coattails, instead of trying something original. For my example i would use suburbia, and HOA based housing. Anything that is built in these communities is nearly the same as what you will find down the street, the contractors and designers of the property have no originality instead they try to focus entirely on what others are living in.

Sleepwalking
The concept for this design method is summed up with the saying "Shooting from the hip" sleepwalking designing is the process of designing a product at the whim and going for the immediate visitable approval. No real consideration is taken on the outcome instead all the really matters is how it looks at that time, regardless of the product or the medium. My example is http://assets.zoomza.com/images/thumbs/categories/myspace_layouts/Companies%20&%20Brands.jpg. While this may fall into the complementary category above, overall the design of it while so-so seems to be nothing more then a random selection of various Coke images that have served as ads in the past.

Opposition
This method is nothing more then identifying the standard for a design, and then going against the grain and putting out the opposite of what the norm is. My examples for this would be any art produced during the Doda period during the turn of the century. While at the time most of the art that was created was organized and well thought out creation wise, and the techniques were sound Doda pieces were often rushed and put together on the whim, very similar to ideas and concepts in the the sleepwalker aspect minus the product design aspects.

Reconceptualisation
This method is the redesign of a product or a company. The current design concept for a product is already established, and then a new one replaces it as the new concept. You will generally find this in business that for whatever reasons are seeking a new market or consumer and they need to market themselves to the new audience. My example of this would be Apple. During the establishing of the computer market 15 years ago apples were generally seen as the mandate and those that knew computers used them. But as Microsoft developed more into the market took over more of the industry, apple was forced to redesign itself completely to aim at those that wanted something outside of the business model that Microsoft was falling intto more and more.