Hi Khoi,

a big thank you once again. it has been wonderful to have this exchange with you, and although your last response takes me to yet another set of questions, I will stop for now. On a different note, do hope that you will have time to keep writing books too among all your myriad activities. I enjoy your brief reflections on films on subtraction but I understand that you are perhaps too pressed for time to develop them further. I for one, would really look forward to a book from you that explores design at the intersection of cultural journalism. all the best, Yolp

Hello Khoi,

wow! was hoping, but didn't expect a second response. thanks so much for being so generous with your time and for a considered response.

the italicised "lot" (a lot of automation) in your response, is of course very significant! So UX design will be even more about systems and architecture and meta-pattens etc. But then what about design as form-giving?

Will there be other modalities of doing design which are not UX? while a certain amount of general UX thinking will possibly pervade other design disciplines too, what are the domains where interpretation, form-making, and editorial attention to close reading, textual nuances, and content, will not be subsumed under 'system-think'?

Or in other words, do you think that the tent of Design Thinking is capacious enough to accommodate various forms of design practice? or do you see UX thinking claiming to become the default condition / substratum of all design thinking?

and on a related note, would love to know what do you think Richard Buchanan's idea of design as the 'Liberal Art of Technological Culture'? [1]

[1] Buchanan, R. 1992 “Wicked Problems in design thinking”, Design Issues, 8(2): 5-21

Hello Khoi, thanks so much for such a considered response. :-) by "tools like your Adobe app" i meant the iPad layout app that you are designing for Adobe. and i was really thinking about the 'automation' of layout tasks that have been traditionally in the designer's domain of expertise. So to put this rhetorically: with the increasing sophistication of machine learning and AI, which areas of the design process do you see becoming more ripe for machine learning "disruption" ?

thanks also for your thoughts on editorial product design. Wanted to ask you more about cultural differences between the editorial world and the engineering heavy UX world, but perhaps i should leave that for another session.

wishing you all the best from Bangalore, cheers, Yolp

Hello,

first of all thanks for your work, your books and your particular take on digital design, that shows its graphic design roots in a very wonderful way. your upcoming app for Adobe is great.

While the designer is always more than her tools, do you think that tools like your Adobe app will become more common and more powerful in the next, say five years?

Secondly, What kind of spaces do you think will be hospitable for editorial focussed graphic design? My question might sound as if it is operating on a (false?) opposition between editorial design and product design, but it does seem that there are some significant differences between the drivers and desires in these two modes.

thanks so much, looking forward to your response, yp