[Sigia-l] Design and Religion

[John Fullerton]

>>> Ziya Oz <listera at earthlink.net> 10/4/2006 3:41 AM >>>
This is the part I'm curious about. :-) Does your faith (whatever it
may be)
impact your design? Or put in another way: if your faith had been
different
would the design output be any different? As I try to explain above, in
my
case, it surely affects what I do and how I do it. Is this subconscious
or a
tangible driver of work?

Well, first of all, I don't actually do much design.

Apart from that, I think the things that Edwards W. Deming (father of
Total Quality Management) said influence me. One example is him saying
many times, "How could they know?" meaning how could management know if
a process was working efficiently without having statistical information
to base their decision on. I extrapolated to how could people know in
general unless information is presented to them in an understandable way
and I became more attuned to researching and learning about how to do
that.

Another influence was McConnell's book "Code Complete" that in this
context could be thought of as helping programmers make their computer
programs (the code) easier for programmer's to understand.

Another was the design book of the designer who helped create Sun's
early internet site. And the related concept is how things are presented
can make it easier to users and more understandable.

While I did not think of these concepts as particularly religious, I do
think that I took them to heart in a context that was somewhat of a
religious origin. For example, I believed that God helped me find the
resources and that he approved of them :) (approved meaning that I
thought it was of benefit for me to learn from them)

And just the concept of laboring to make something more understandable
seems to have some possible (from a religious point of view) dependance
on the intrinsic value of persons and a sense of owing them good.

All of that said, I don't think of technical work as a religious
activity, yet I do believe and feel help and maybe even intent from God
in doing technical work (even writing this note).

So, the main content comment that I'm thinking of (that may not yet be
evident) is that one's religious values and perceptions could influence
how one takes thoughts of usability and design, not saying that a
religious point of view is needed for usability and design.

Have a nice day
John Paul Fullerton
j-fullerton at tamu.edu