Designing Together

摘要

During our joint years on the executive board of the American Society for Cybernetics, I had the opportunity to design together with Ranulph Glanville, the cybernetician and design researcher who established and drew attention to the value and structure of designing together. In this paper I outline the context of our collaboration as well as aspects of Ranulph's design theory, followed by three short email exchanges that indicate the nature of our online design conversations. The purpose is to offer a glimpse of data recorded in Ranulph's design practice, complementing the theoretical work Ranulph has published on the subject of designing, and to offer a verbatim insight into Ranulph's working style. I point out that on a day-to-day basis our design conversations were subject to various challenges, and that they were bleak at times. I point out that, nonetheless, the thinking and ethos behind our work, and the match of form and content made our work more than worthwhile.