Interface/an approach to design

Visible Language, 2001 by Frascara, Jorge

INTERFACE/AN APPROACH TO DESIGN Gui Bonsiepe Maastricht: Jan Van Eyck Akademie, 1999 ISBN 90-6617-212-6 168 pages, softbound, illustrated, one color

SCOPE

The book is a collection of papers, articles, one interview and conference presentations, mainly written in the nineties, but including a few pieces from the eighties and one from 1965. It touches on many topics, introducing as a consequence a complex picture of the design problem, in a somewhat postmodern fashion. Somewhat postmodern in the sense that there is no clear beginning, middle and end, nor is there any grand plan. The book is a documentation of Bonsiepe's preoccupations about design and designing, the contexts within which design operates and the social forces that affect its purpose and practice.

There are several recurring themes and the title suggests the reader might want to focus on the discussion of design as a practice that deals with the connections between users and products, that is, as the creation of interfaces. Indeed, the English version's title is somewhat different from the Italian, Spanish and Portuguese editions, in which the direct translation would be "From the object to the interface." That is, in the other editions the emphasis of the title is on a historical process of change with the concerns in the designer's mind: the move from being interested in the design of objects to becoming interested in the design of the relations between objects and people. The English edition, instead, centers on the design of interfaces (in the broad sense of the term) as a choice, rather than as the result of a historical process. While some articles at the beginning of the book center on the actual design of interfaces for computer programs (42-56), the gist of the book suggests that the design of interfaces (in the sense of points of articulation, bridges or connections) is the ever present problem of the designer, whether dealing with the visual presentation of screens for CDRoms or with agricultural machinery. Bonsiepe's definition of interface in the broad sense appears on page 29: ". . . the interface is not a material object, it is the dimension for interaction between the body, tool and purposeful action. This is not only true of material artifacts, but also for semiotic artifacts, for instance, information in communicative action."

The book, however, extends well beyond the title, and wanders through the design territory in a wide exploration of concerns. The author lists seven central topics in the preface: "The reinterpretation of design as 'interface design'; hypermedia as new cognitive technologies; text and visuality; design and language; design education; the role of design in the peripheral world; and development, industrialization and environmental crisis"(8). But it is easy to also recognize other recurrent themes, such as the need for design theory, the economic imbalance between industrialized and less industrialized countries and the problem of cultural identity. A further indication of the thematic breadth of the book is given by the fact that there are twenty-one articles and each article is headed by a title and a list of keywords (one hundred and thirty-nine of them in total). A subject index at the end of the book is a very useful reference. It should also be noted that the material was originally written for seven specialized journals, and for presentations in Brazil, Cuba, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain and Uruguay. The author, in addition, has lived in Germany, Chile, Argentina, Brazil and the United States, and has been actively involved in educational and governmental institutions in Mexico and Cuba. This wealth of experience brings a cultural and a geopolitical context to the book that strongly frames the nature of its content. This is particularly true when discussing issues of cultural identity and economic imbalance: two concerns that are extremely strong in Latin America and practically nonexistent in the other countries mentioned. One might wonder to what extent papers on these subjects, that were originally delivered in Latin American countries, can be relevant or even understandable to the English reader without previous discussion. Bonsiepe echoes this point. He states: "It is hard for the central countries to understand this. In the periphery the problems of design are primarily political, and only secondly are they technical and/or professional"(31-32). He thereafter offers a brief discussion of this issue. I am not a good judge for the subject, since I have never been interested in the pursuit of identity, whether during the sixteen years I worked in Argentina or the twenty-four I lived in Canada. Identity is something that happens, whether one likes it or not. It resists reductions and, as Bonsiepe argues, it cannot be found in the past (107). Knowledge of the past is an asset (he states), but identity has to do with the present and the present of any country's design, today, is complex and interconnected.