peterme.com		Thoughts, links, and essays from Peter Merholz
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Home Archives Archives before June 13, 2001 RSS Feed Adaptive Path (my company!) About peterme Coordinates Most of the Time Oakland, CA Interests Current American history around the time of the Revolution, figuring out how to marry top-down task-based information architecture processes with bottom-up document-based ones, finding a good dentist in San Francisco Oakland Perennial Designing the user experience (interaction design, information architecture, user research, etc.), cognitive science, ice cream, films and film theory, girls, commuter bicycling, coffee, travel, theoretical physics for laypeople, single malt scotch, fresh salmon nigiri, hanging out, comics formalism, applied complexity theory, Krispy Kreme donuts. surf Click to see where I wander. Wish list Show me you love me by buying me things. Spyonme Track updates of this page with Spyonit. Clickee here. Essays [Editor's note: peterme.com began as a site of self-published essays, a la Stating The Obvious. This evolved (or devolved) towards link lists and shorter thoughtpieces. These essays are getting a tad old, but have some good ideas.] Reader Favorites Interface Design Recommended Reading List Whose "My" Is It Anyway? Frames: Information Vs. Application Subjects Interface Design Web Development Movie Reviews Travel		Organizational issues for design. Posted on 12/28/2001. I found the essay in the last post via Phil Agre's Red Rock Eater. I'm guessing he stumbled across it as he as preparing writing this just-published draft: Institutional Analysis for Design". I haven't had time to read and think about it, but check it out. 1 comment so far. Add a comment. Previous entry: "User-centered design-types: Read This Article!" Next entry: "So, like, you know..." Comments: COMMENT #1 Agre's arguing for an institution-centric sort of contextual design: use an athropology-like approach which understands how all kinds of factors and participants fit together, in order to do design. He contrasts user-centered design with institution-centered design in a way that might seem to many of us to be misusing the term user-centered. As usual, Agre's got lots of interesting and insightful stuff to say. Posted by Andrew @ 01/01/2002 03:39 AM PST [link to this comment] Add A New Comment: Name E-Mail (optional) Homepage (optional) Comments Now with a bigger box for text entry! Whee! All contents of peterme.com are © 1998 - 2002 Peter Merholz.