Last changed 22 July 2011 ............... Length about 600 words (6,000 bytes).
(Document started on 29 Apr 2006.) This is a WWW document maintained by Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/midge/index.html. You may copy it. How to refer to it.

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A thesis on differences in designers' interactions with their media

This page hosts access to a PhD thesis by Midge McLundie on the differences between designers in the way interaction with their medium plays a role in their design process.

Mairghread McLundie (2006)
Beyond the formal/concrete axis: A study of individual difference in approach to design practice
(PhD thesis: University of Glasgow / Glasgow School of Art)

Below is my view of why you might be interested in it, the official abstract, and a complete copy of the thesis to download. First, something about the author.

The author

The author, also known as Midge, formerly worked for the Digital Design Studio of the Glasgow School of Art. She may be contacted at: email midge.mclundie AT googlemail.com

She is also a published poet: "Preparation" p.121 in A.Bissett & C.MacDougall (2011) (eds.) The flight of the turtle: New Writing Scotland 29 (Assoc. for Scottish Literary Studies)

Cycling blog (Lands End to John O'Groats.)

Why you might be interested

Downloading

In an arbitrary compromise between having files that are too slow for convenient downloading, and the annoyance of having to do too many separate download operations (and then having to collate them back into order), we have divided the thesis into 6 PDF files.

If you wish to download only parts of the thesis then the first of the six chunks, which is by far the smallest, includes chapter summaries which may be helpful in deciding which parts you want.

From title page up to chapter 1 inclusive, with abstract, table of contents, introduction, etc. mclundiePt1.pdf (0.3 Mbytes)
Chapters 2 - 6 mclundiePt2.pdf (4 Mbytes)
Chapters 7 & 8 (both with photos) mclundiePt3.pdf (4.2 Mbytes)
Chapter 9 to Appendix B inclusive mclundiePt4.pdf (3 Mbytes)
Appendices C - H mclundiePt5.pdf (2 Mbytes)
Appendix I up to the end, including References mclundiePt6.pdf (1.5 Mbytes)

Another thesis

"The Design Space: the design process as the construction, exploration and expansion of a conceptual space."
by Chris Heape available at: http://idisk.mac.com/designarena-Public/

Methodology: "interventionist, hermeneutic, phenomenological".
Method: studio experiments with design and design engineering students in Denmark and the USA.
Ideas:

The design process can also be considered a learning process.
Design proposals are emergent compositions that are gradually pulled to the fore against the ground of a Design Space as a whole.

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