Could this be the beginning of something a little unexpected even to me: a reformulation of the design projects I've experienced and struggled with and enjoyed, quite often without worldly success?

I came to the idea after a dream (derived from one of those projects*) in which I seemed to be free (as never happened in life) to experience greatly changed roles ( for designers and others) so as to realise a vision of what I'm now calling 'user design': the basing of design process not on 'producing' but on 'using'... the difficult but good implications of which will I hope become evident as this 'dictionary' takes form (in reality as well as in utopia).

The immediate effect of this intention is to reanimate many userdesign projects that presently exist only in my records and memory - and to renew enthusiasms that were often quenched in the struggle to re-arrange mechanised lives and motives to the point of giving ourselves (as people not as office holders) the lead in all decisions of consequence.

Certain 'hard words' that I then saw and still see as essential to this change will surely survive in this dictionary of reversals - but I hope in forms that enable and inspire us to seek and enjoy what in former times we could only resist.

The gist and purpose of this dictionary is to make available some new pathways and methods of designing as users and as people - and to clear away obstacles to so doing. This will I hope begin a re-education of ourselves, our aims and our perceptions, as well as of our roles and our motives... Perhaps this will still remain in some degree utopian but I hope that it will bring a wider and more human realism to the whole question of userdesign (and creative democracy as I call it) in and as the changing forms of industrial society and culture as we've know them...

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