Application of Heuristic Evaluation Method by Universal Design Experts

This study highlights how heuristic evaluation as a usability evaluation method can feed into current building design practice to conform to universal design principles. It provides a definition of universal usability that is applicable to an architectural design context. It takes the seven universal design principles as a set of heuristics and applies an iterative sequence of heuristic evaluation in a shopping mall, aiming to achieve a cost-effective evaluation process. The evaluation was composed of three consecutive sessions. First, five evaluators from different professions were interviewed regarding the construction drawings in terms of universal design principles. Then, each evaluator was asked to perform the predefined task scenarios. In subsequent interviews, the evaluators were asked to re-analyze the construction drawings. The results showed that heuristic evaluation could successfully integrate universal usability into current building design practice in two ways: (i) it promoted an iterative evaluation process combined with multi-sessions rather than relying on one evaluator and on one evaluation session to find the maximum number of usability problems, and (ii) it highlighted the necessity of an interdisciplinary ad hoc committee regarding the heuristic abilities of each profession. A multi-session and interdisciplinary heuristic evaluation method can save both the project budget and the required time, while ensuring a reduced error rate for the universal usage of the built environments.

The "Art" of Criticism: Rubén Darío and his Unknown Chronicles of the 1895 Salon for "La Prensa"

With the impetus that has led recent studies on Latin American Modernism to a reevaluation of the sense of cultural fluxes from the modernity capitals to its peripheries –discarding categories such as “influence”, “exotism” and “ivory tower”, stereotypes that have clouded critical understanding of this aesthetics for decades- the present study intends to investigate a persistent practice of the main writers of the movement. This practice is modernist pictorial criticism, a genre that will be approached through the analysis of an unknown corpus: the seven chronicles Rubén Darío published in the journal La Prensa on occasion of the third art exposition of the Ateneo de Buenos Aires. Our hypothesis is that the rare creators of images portrayed by Darío by the end of 1895 work as a visual counterpoint of the eccentric writers’ biographical sketches that a year later will be part of the fundamental volume Los raros (1896). In this early “salon”, which we reproduce in its entirety, accompanied by explanatory notes, the leader of Modernism rehearses and consolidates his transcultural work with the universal tradition –now applied to the Salons (1845-1860) by Charles Baudelaire and to the monumental project by John Ruskin in Modern painters (1843-1860)- to legitimate, from another subgenre of Modernist criticism, a new figure of the critic, in dissent with the Enlightenment model of the writer.

Emergencias de la mediación intelectual. "La Revista de América" (París, 1912-1914) y la red de escritores latinoamericanos en Europa a comienzos del siglo XX

Este trabajo estudia el proyecto editorial de la Revista de América (1912-1914), fundada en París y dirigida por Francisco García Calderón. Mi propósito es analizar el modo en que muchos de los vínculos entre los escritores latinoamericanos radicados en París entre fines del siglo XIX y la Primera Guerra Mundial se materializaron en la edición de revistas. Propongo examinar las estrategias de difusión de las producciones latinoamericanas en el Viejo Continente, como así también algunos aspectos ideológicos y de intervención intelectual que la revista llegó a articular. En un primer momento, me detengo en los rasgos materiales tanto del proyecto editorial de la revista como de los vínculos entre los latinoamericanos desterrados. Luego indago las distintas formas de mediación crítica, por un lado, y cultural, por otro, que la revista escenificó y, en algunos casos, desarrolló activamente. En efecto, la revista de García Calderón vuelve visible una dimensión mediadora en varios sentidos: mediación crítica entre productores y lectores, pues se propuso como instancia de difusión, al convocar a “a los mejores escritores latinoamericanos”. Al mismo tiempo, propuso otras dos mediaciones: entre pares, al funcionar como consagradora, seleccionando y agrupando simbólicamente a los escritores de cada país latinoamericano. Finalmente, una mediación intercontinental entre culturas en la contemporaneidad, que intentó acercar dos gestos en la acción de la revista: una legitimación del pensamiento y el arte “de ultramar” y una valoración de los desarrollos artísticos europeos del presente.

The redemption of the gaze: the crisis of observation in the "fin de siècle" and the advent of cinema

The intention of this article is not to affirm, but rather to question wether it is possible to speak of a loss of the ability to gaze in the context of the nineteenth century and especially in the context of the fin de siècle, in the bosom of the epistemological crisis that beset the Turn of the Century. And very especially, this article tries to question about the impact this crisis had, perhaps, in the birth of cinema. Is in this context that arises the work of Marey and the advent of the cinematograph of the Lumière brothers in the fin de siècle Europe, both of them showing a deep faith in a mechanical apparatus that would allow the redemption of a battered gaze. And it seems to be a dream that continues over time through the tradition of shooting the everyday life.

Some thoughts on Juan Antonio Ramírez´s iconologic-paranoid method for the study of Dali´s works

In 1990, Juan Antonio Ramírez made known his iconological paranoiac method to the academic world. It is a system devised to study Dalí´s work, born of happy matrimony between the catalonian artist´s critical paranoiac method and the first iconographic school of Warburg and Panofsky. What, at first sight, seemed to be an extravagant methodology with little academic credibility, turned out to be, by going forward in time, an effective research method when analyzing Dali´s initial works. It is no wonder that, at the beginning of XXI century, this hybridization between Dalí´s and Panofsky’s methods, were regarded as a strange and nonsensical idea. Nevertheless, twenty years after, blatant examples have been noted, which endorse the advantages of this new system for “iconographic” study. As usual, this new contribution by Juan Antonio Ramirez to art history methodology is called upon to have a successful future survival, in forthcoming generations. This article, attempts to analyze this method, inquiring into the validity, effectiveness and practical utility.