This course is called Design Creation of Artifacts in Society.

I want to start by talking about what design is and also talking about what artifacts are. So, let's start with the artifact question first. The, the dictionary basically defines artifacts as human made objects. And that distinguishes things objects that are found in nature from objects that were created by humans. So, for instance, this is a, a, a fossil of some fish that was created 55 million years ago in what is now the United States. This is an object, but it's not an artifact. It wasn't created by humans. In contrast, this is an object, an ice cream scoop, the, the, the rather great ice cream scoop, by the way, made by Zyliss, I highly recommend it. And this ice cream scoop is, is an object but was clearly made by humans. And, so when we're talking about artifacts, we're talking about objects that were made by, by humans. Now, in this course, I'm going to use the definition of artifact definition of artifact that's quite broad. So, Well, the dictionary defines artifacts as objects, that is physical objects, We're going to use artifact in a broader sense. And so, we're going to include for instance, software, services, business models, and processes as under the definition of artifact and not, not strictly those objects that are physical in nature. Alright. So, some examples of artifacts, so, so, design is the creation of these artifacts. Some examples of artifacts, I just talked about the ice cream scoop but there are lots of other kinds of artifact, facts. For instance, there's the excellent salad, the Insalata Caprese, which was invented by someone allegedly on the island of Capri in, in the south of Italy. There this is, this is the Fine Arts Library at the University of Pennsylvania that was designed by the architect Frank Furness, That's also a nice artifact. This is an example, this is a staircase that, that is in the Apple store in Tokyo, Japan that's also a, a, an artifact.

And, and this is a little bit of software, a little bit of, of scheme code that is also an artifact. I don't mean the literal printout of the code, but rather the symbolic representation of that code is also an artifact, at least in the definition that we're using in this course even though it's not a physical object, per se. All right. So, let's talk about design and where these artifacts come from. And I'm going to use a simple example here and I'm going to tell you a little story. It's entirely fictitious, but hopefully it will illustrate the idea. So, if we look at this fantastic artifact that is available in the twenty-first century in, in the developed world, This, this didn't come from nowhere. And, it would be very interesting to know or to think about where the first ice cream scoop came from and how it came about. So, ice cream is, there's, there's differing in views of the history of ice cream. But, by at least the tenth century, Ice cream was available in Arab cities like Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo. And it's pretty interesting to think, by the way, about where ice came from in Arab cities like Baghdad, Damascus, and Cairo in the tenth century, but we'll leave that for, for your own exploration and inquiry. Let's just go with the history or the alleged history that ice cream was readily available in the tenth century in those Arab cities. Now, let's imagine the first ice cream maker. Let's call her Tavia. And, Tavia had, let me find Tavia's ice cream here. Tavia had this, this great stuff, right? This ice cream. And it was really good. But she had this problem here which is, how am I going to serve this? And now, you know, probably she didn't think to use her hands that was probably not the, the default. and probably, a good guess was Tavia had some kind of spoon. And, so, so Tavia went to, to serve the ice cream and immediately discovered that even in the soft ice cream of the tenth century a spoon was actually a pretty inadequate object for doing that job. And in this case it, it, it, it didn't even manage to just put a dent in the ice cream before it, it, it bent quite, quite readily. And so, Tavia faced this problem, which is

I've got this great stuff, I need to figure out a better way to serve it, And my existing solutions are inadequate. And that created a gap that is a problem. And, design is responsive to problems like that. And so, you might imagine that Tabia said alright what am I going to do here? Let me think about that. And, geez, maybe I could create some other kind of, of object. Um., I don't know, maybe. And now, I'll sketch out what that might look like and, and gee, let me go. Now that I've got a sound conception of what some alternative might be. Let me now go and, and, and, and, and make that. So, I'll be right back. So, Tavia comes back and has a, a realization of that object, in this case, that the first ice cream scoop in our story is, is, is a, a, crude block of wood with an iron tray on it that's, that's fastened with a couple of this nails that are pounded in the side. And this is now a much more sturdy, more shovel like object, and let's see, let's see how it works, the first ice cream scoop. It creates this nice, well, maybe not so nice but, at least it doesn't bend. And it creates it makes a, a more ready removal of the ice cream. Alright. So, that's, we might imagine a story that would explain the first ice cream. And, if you think about what, what just happened there, There was a problem that is a gap. And then, Tavia was responsive to that gap, conceived of sum form, and then executed that form in order produced that form in order to create an artifact. And that, in essence, is the, the, what design is. The definition we're going to use in this course is that the design is conceiving and giving form to artifacts that solve problems, Alright? Design is conceiving and giving form to artifacts that solve problems and design fits into an overall problem solving process in which a gap is experienced. Design creates a plan for the conception and form for the artifact. And then, there is some production process that takes that plan and produces the

artifact. I said that, perhaps, this group didn't really create a very nice form of the ice cream. It has, It didn't do its job extremely well. That's very typical in design of the first effort, of the first version of an artifact that attempts to address a gap in the user experience. A very interesting question is, how we as a society, or we as individual designers go from this first effort to a highly refined and very successful product that really does address the gap quite well, like this one and that's going to be a subject of another module. I want you to think about a question based on what I've said about design, and that is what's really included in the human activity of design. What's in and what's, what's out. And to test your thinking on that, let me ask you about a specific example. There's a man named Scott Kim who creates very interesting graphics. Here's an example of one of his graphics in which the word Scott Kim, if flipped over, that is if viewed from upside down, spells the word inversions. And, in fact, he calls this category of graphics that he creates inversions. Here's another one of his inversions where the word Egyptian is, is spelled out, no matter which direction you look at this. As whether you look at it from the top, whether you look at it from the bottom, it spells the word Egyptian. And, these are really interesting graphics. In fact, I've spent a lot of time in, in boring meetings, or in boring events playing around with inversions. It's kind of fun to see if you can create your name, create a version of your name that works whether viewed one direction or the other. So, for instance here is my name, Karl, Which I've created in a way that it spells Karl both this way, and this way. All right. So, you might want to try that next time you're in a, in a boring meeting. See whether you can create an inversion based on your name. The question I want to ask you to think about is whether or not that's design. Is, are, is Scott Kim's graphic, his category graphics he calls an inversion, Is that design? Based on our definition in this course.

So, think about that question. Are Scott Kim's inversions design? Well, first of all, let me say that I'm not terribly hung up on the definition and you shouldn't be either. Really, we're just adopting a definition so that we can agree with each other about what we're talking about in this course. And so, we can put some bounds on the activity that we're discussing. My own personal view is that, it probably is not design, that is inversions are really Scott Kim's self expression. I would consider that more in the category of art than in the category of design. But I can easily imagine a slight tweak to inversions that would make it very much design. So, imagine that you were trying to design a label for a laptop computer that would be readable from either direction and that was a graphic design challenge that you faced. In that case, there would be a clear gap. That is, there wpuld be a problem to be solved and the conception in giving form to an artifact to solve that problem would, in fact, be design. So, that's my personal opinion. Again, don't get too hung up on it, I just wanted you to start thinking about, where is the boundary of design. What's the distinction between design and art.