```tracker searchType: frontmatter searchTarget: weight folder: daily notes line: title: Weight Tracker yAxisLabel: weight lineColor: blue ``` # Things to put in the enrico email - https://philpapers.org/rec/FENTDC Gardens - the Borgmann paper should go in the repository # Flowstate text on [[the design]] paper [[Beauty in use]] let’s fucking go and get this thing structured. First a quick brainstorm because the biggest problem is how to get the [[positive account]] on the table. What question am I trying to answer? In a way I am trying to make the positive case for our aesthetic apppreciation of design to have an agentive aspective. by which I mean that part of our appreciation of design is in our aesthetically appreciating our own interactions with designed things. How can I motivate that this is properly thought of as an aspect of [[design aesthetics]]? One thing is simply to point to [[invisible design]], and say that designers themselves talk about how good design is not simply how something looks but how it works. How it works can plausibly be thought of in terms of [[the aesthetics]] of use, are there any. It is easy to understand how [[the functional beauty]] approach, and indeed any perception based approach falls down here. Key example: [[butterfly keyboard]]. It is also easy to make the case that simply augmenting the account with a tactile element does not do the job either. We can still think of objects that feel fit for function, but which are not plesant to use. Can we? [[What sort]] of thing would that be? Something that feels like it is sturdy but is actually breakable? I need a killer example here? Another possibility would be visual only cases. Key example: a badly laid out page (or webpage) of text). Note too that it is hard to even make sense of something looking ‘fit for function’ when it comes to objects which are designed to be seen. Sure, we might call a typeface beautiful but when we [[say this]] do we mean that it looks as if it is easy to read? Can [[the beauty]] of the typeface lie in its looking easy to read. Let’s move onto Forsey. Use does play a role in her account but not the *experience* of use. In her case, it seems as if use is one of many streams for determining how well something works, other streams would be how it looks, and, perhaps, testomony as to how well it works? But this does not seem to work about how well it feels to use an object. Consider who too coffee pots example, his might look nicer –this can be worked out either in terms of formal properties– or in terms of [[functional beauty]]. But Forsey seems to be making claims about how easy/efficiently one makes coffee rather than another. she talks about getting burned, difficulty in cleaning etc. But if this is all there is then should we be primarily concerned with efficieny and ease. Maybe we can then say that all Forsey’s account amounts to is ease of use. We can add a bit of colour to this by giving that approving quote from Saito. But there are good reasons to think that ease of use cannot be all there is. If it were then wouldn’t an automatic coffee machine, one in which coffee is made at the push of a button, be preferable to her coffee pot? (at least providing the coffee produced is the same quality) Fun fact: Bialetti make quite bitter coffee due to their heating it to too high a tempurature. This leads us to Borgmann’s ideas about *engagement*, as found in [[the Aesthetics]] and design book. Both Borgmann and Geoff seem to think of engagement in terms of flourishing –which they understand predominantly in terms of socialogical, or ethical stuff. They do mention interaction itself but consider it to be less important than flourishing. We are interested in the interaction bit rather than the flourishing bit. Ok, here is maybe a way to structure things: start with two related desiderata that a complete aesthetics of design needs to meet. D1 There is such a thing as good [[invisible design]]. D2 Some objects are aesthetically pleasing to use. This is not to say that these are the only