Wednesday 6 January 2010

Defining Categories

Since the very begin of the diploma I had decided to categorize my observations under the following categories: form - color - proportions - material - context - names.
I decided to drop the category of the names, as it is by itself a whole research field and I considered it as a Meta-level research.
Then the others categories became more concrete with time to : Form - Color - Scale - Materiality - Context (as emotions and as behaviors).
The category of the Context is related to the interaction between object and user, so in that sense is not direct connected with the material substance of the object.
These categorization is the guide for the morphological analogies between the objects and the human pedomorphosis. And it seems that this kind of definitions of the morphology of objects is been used also by design researchers. Not long time ago, I came across this book Steven Skov Holt & Mara Holt Skov (2005). Blobjects & Beyond: the new fluidity in design. San Francisco, Chronicle Books.
In one of the chapters they had exactly the same categorization and actually defended them as the main components in which an object can be analysed.