Dear David,
Your point of view seems quite important to me. As a student coming from
practice I was quite amazed by the differences in approaches in the academic
contexts. I even remember my supervisors first comments when I submitted my
pilot study work. He said "Now dont think like a profesional...U r a
scholar". Perhaps he had a reason for this, but I consider it as a
detrimental attitude towards design research. It seems to me that, we,
design researchers have built a large cocoon among ourselves to protect us
from the barrage of criticism.What is a design research worth if it does not
generate and allow for criticism? Even untenable arguments can be valid and
persuasive even though not directly worth.

Newton D'souza

-----Original Message-----
From: David Sless [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, March 22, 2001 2:34 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: paper of interest + PhD in design


Dear All

As I said when I joined this list, my capacity to be a constant and timely
contributor is quite limited.

I had said that I would get back to Rosan's question by the end of February,
but here we are well into March. To remind people, this is what Rosan wrote:

>Thank you for your post. I read the paper and am trying to make
>connection to my study and like to ask for your help.


>In your paper, your share with us your ideas on co-designing: its
>philosophical principles, a conceptual map of its practical
>procedures/processes and examples that are based on and/or result from
>your over 15 years of experiences practicing this, I may call, approach
>to design.


>Now my question is: what do you see or envision, as a practitioner, can
>be a link or collaboration with PhDs in design? In other words, what are
>the contributions you would like to see PhDs in design can make, given
>your purposes.

I will begin by telling you what I have been working on that has kept me
away from the list, because it has a bearing on Rosan's question, and may
offer some possible ways forward.

I've been writing a report on a project we did last year: a critical
literature review into medicines information research, asking the question
whether there were generalised principles to the design of medicines
information which could be applied in a variety of cultural contexts.

Our review was quite broad and took in not only the medicines information
research but also research on other types of product information, and
information design more broadly.

Such a review would be quite a common thing for a PhD student to undertake
as part of their work towards a research thesis. As we sorted through the
papers from an information design point of view one thing above all else
struck us; on one side we were accumulating a large and growing pile of
papers which were of poor quality, or offered us no new knowledge from an
information design point of view; on the other side was a small pile of
marginally useful papers.

Ours is by no means a unique experience. Nor was it entirely unexpected. But
what struck us on this occasion was the sheer scale of the difference: on
one side hundreds of papers, on the other side, under ten. As both a
practitioner and a researcher I would like to have more than ten research
papers on which to base my design decisions and on which to build my own
research activity. Therefore, the first thing that I would like PhDs in
design to do is to do research which is relevant to information design.

Just to give you one example from our review (an example I mention briefly
in the co-designing paper) In our own research we have found that it is
possible to specify benchmark performance standards for medicines
information: roughly speaking, the benchmark suggests that any literate
person should be able to find and use appropriately 80% of what they look
for in medicines information leaflets or labels. If a particular leaflet or
label falls below this benchmark, it has to be redesigned and retested to
find out whether, once redesigned, it meets or exceeds the benchmark. In our
review we looked for studies where these or similar benchmarks had been
used. We found none. But this is just one of many technical issues on which
we have very little or no data at all. Creating and developing this type of
data is one thing on which PhD students could do some useful work.

A second and more challenging area of research concerns the scoping stage
and boundary shifting, as I call it in the co-designing paper. This is the
point at which Horst Rittel's 'Wicked problems' manifest themselves most
clearly. It is the point in the design process when we realise that our
romantic visions of a perfect design solution--a panacea--turns into a
prosthetic device, grand vision turns into band-aid. We move between
philosophical poles, offering on one side the best solution in the best of
all possible worlds, and on the other side a decorative papering over the
cracks. I'm not suggesting that these polarisations are the only or
necessary conditions in which design exists, but I offer them to illustrate
that design is often a process of radical change in philosophical and moral
positions. How are we to deal with such radical change? It seems to me that
thoughtful doctoral students could usefully reflect on these questions and
offer some interesting insights for those of us who face these on a daily
basis.

Most challenging of all, it seems to me, is to develop and articulate a
design point of view: a view that does not see design through the lenses of
cognitive science, communication theory, rhetoric, art history, cultural
studies, management science etc, but sees design from a uniquely designerly
point of view, and measures these other points of view through its own
distinctive lens. If design is to be central to the liberal arts of this
century, its legitimacy and disciplines must emerge from its own activity,
its own point of view. Developing and articulating that point of view should
be there in doctoral research in design.

Sorry this has taken so long to generate. I hope it generates some
interesting discussion.

David


--
Professor David Sless
Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
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