I propose the creation of a "Universal Design Encyclopedia Wiki" - UDEW (*) for short. Why?
Many reviewers comment on the book's lack of depth, while commending its breadth of coverage. Others say that whilst it covers the ground adequately, it's only useful - as a summary, or synopsis of design theory - to a reader who already understands design very well; and that a newcomer to the field could not learn good design from it alone.
What if there were an encyclopedia of design, using the principles in this book as its skeleton? There'd be, at least, one article for each of the 125 (or however many this figure may be revised to) principles; its function would be to teach that principle thoroughly and in depth, with several examples. There might also be other articles on design theory, or on its history, theorists and practitioners, which would naturally make reference as appropriate to the "principles" articles.
Such a work would be of inestimable value to both practicing designers and to students of design.
To ensure it were accurate and appropriately based on evidence, it should be easy to expand and to correct. The obvious format for such a work of universal design reference is, of course, a wiki, which is _designed_ to meet such goals. Perhaps using the MediaWiki platform, and under the WikiMedia umbrella organisation, could give such a project several immediate advantages, of which I'll mention just two:
1) That readers' expectations of how to use it would naturally flow from their understanding of how other WikiMedia projects, e.g and especially Wikipedia, is used; and
2) That it would gain publicity as an automatic side-effect of its inclusion in the various lists of MediaWiki and WikiMedia projects.
--------------------------------------------------- (*) (Note that we couldn't call the UDEW project "DesignPedia", since there are already websites called "DesignPedia", "Design-Pedia", and "Design Pedia", which are all clearly about design, but are either individual blogs or commercial ventures.) ---------------------------------------------------
Universal Principles of Design, Revised and Updated
discussion
Many reviewers comment on the book's lack of depth, while commending its breadth of coverage. Others say that whilst it covers the ground adequately, it's only useful - as a summary, or synopsis of design theory - to a reader who already understands design very well; and that a newcomer to the field could not learn good design from it alone.
What if there were an encyclopedia of design, using the principles in this book as its skeleton? There'd be, at least, one article for each of the 125 (or however many this figure may be revised to) principles; its function would be to teach that principle thoroughly and in depth, with several examples. There might also be other articles on design theory, or on its history, theorists and practitioners, which would naturally make reference as appropriate to the "principles" articles.
Such a work would be of inestimable value to both practicing designers and to students of design.
To ensure it were accurate and appropriately based on evidence, it should be easy to expand and to correct. The obvious format for such a work of universal design reference is, of course, a wiki, which is _designed_ to meet such goals. Perhaps using the MediaWiki platform, and under the WikiMedia umbrella organisation, could give such a project several immediate advantages, of which I'll mention just two:
1) That readers' expectations of how to use it would naturally flow from their understanding of how other WikiMedia projects, e.g and especially Wikipedia, is used; and
2) That it would gain publicity as an automatic side-effect of its inclusion in the various lists of MediaWiki and WikiMedia projects.
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(*) (Note that we couldn't call the UDEW project "DesignPedia", since there are already websites called "DesignPedia", "Design-Pedia", and "Design Pedia", which are all clearly about design, but are either individual blogs or commercial ventures.)
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Your thoughts, please?
Yo!