Dear Keith,

Thanks for your note referring to the competition for the Design
Thinking Prize. There are no entries yet.

This is long post addresses you as a philosophical fellow traveler
down the Yellow Brick Road to Oz. First, I will challenge the idea
that I offered a tautology. Then I am going to explain my purpose in
sponsoring the competition. Finally, I will close with a few words
from the old home of the philosophers.

Some may approach this as a tautology. I have not done so. As a
philosopher, this should be clear to you. You wrote, "all research
reports are research reports and all artifacts are artifacts."
Nothing in the competition call or my notes suggests this tautology.
If you see a tautology, please demonstrate the explicit statement and
its tautological equivalent rather than substituting a new statement.

The challenge calls for a general set of criteria, a distinction
between research results and their applied outcome, a clear
demonstration of the conditions under which an artifact may
constitute a research report, and the conditions under which an
artifact would be invalid as a research report.

Any list of criteria is open to challenge. That is what the
competition is about.

The challenge is a response to a "call for objects" for the Common
Ground Conference. The call posted to DRS involved a modified text
that went beyond the conference committee call. The author of the
modified text called for "self-explanatory" objects that would
constitute self-contained research reports. A later note by the same
author argued the possibility of a complete research report in "in
visual symbolic texts" rather than "alphanumeric symbols." Since the
clear, unambiguous statements required for a research report
generally require words in alphanumeric symbols (including their
equivalent in ideograms), this statement claims it is possible to
produce a research report without using text.

How can it be done? That is the question here.

This kind of claim has been heard in design circles for years. Three
times in the past decade, Nigel Cross (1993: 226-7; Cross 1995: 2;
1999: unpaged) has addressed this notion. No one has answered him. No
one has yet produced support for the assertion. No one has even
produced a tentative and incomplete statement of how to do it. The
repeated claim is merely the assertion that it is possible. Are you
ready to accept the claim on personal authority, private intuition,
or divine revelation?

It is time to demonstrate the possibility of a "self-explanatory
object" that constitutes a complete research report.

The Design Thinking Prize competition is not a call for an artifact.
It is a call for a conceptual demonstration that such an artifact is
possible.

The conceptual demonstration of a "self-explanatory object" that can
constitute a complete research report is to such an artifact as a
Turing Machine is to a computer. The Turing Machine is a conceptual
computer originally described in a 1937 article by Alan Turing. The
machine he describes can, in theory, perform any computation that any
computer can perform, albeit at a slow rate of operation. All
computers are Turing Machines in a sense. This conceptual description
was a major step forward in the art and science of general
computation and it made a great contribution to the information
technology that we use today.

It is easy to throw out a seductive post claiming that a
self-explanatory object can constitute a complete and self-sufficient
research report without using text. Repeating claim without offering
substance is tendentious.

I would welcome a robust challenge. A challenge good enough to win
the prize would get us past fruitless debate and into fruitful
inquiry. That would be a valuable outcome.

Many designers have made the claim that an artifact can serve as a
complete research result. This also applies to the often-repeated
claim that an artifact, a designed object, or a painting can be, in
itself, a doctoral dissertation, or thesis without supporting text.
Since a PhD dissertation is a complete research report, it must by
logical deduction, meet all demands of any other independent research
result.

While anyone may make such a claim, the claim has no consequences for
those who tend to make it. It has potentially serious consequences
for the design research students who accept it as a serious notion.

Most of the people who make this claim are studio design teachers.
They are currently employed. They make a living teaching design
skills to undergraduate students and taught master's students. They
do not generally have research students. They have no research
responsibilities. Most of them produce no serious research.

None of the studio design teachers who ALSO engage in serious
research seem to make this claim.

When fledgling research students in a young field believe such a
claim, some tend to pursue it. If such a research result is
impossible, this is a costly mistake. Research training is limited,
time is scarce, and no student can afford years of mistaken probes.

This is not a case of false steps toward a serious goal. Many
theoretical possibilities are nearly impossible in practice. It often
takes years of false steps to reach difficult solutions in many
fields.

In this case, there is no reason to believe that this outcome is
possible in theory.

How problematic is this notion?

A senior lecturer teaching studio courses at a design school has no
need to publish or produce research results. The fact that he is
unable to produce research is irrelevant. The only problem he may
suffer in uttering specious claims is an occasional moment of
embarrassment on an email list or at a conference.

For a Ph.D. student or a young researcher who does not yet have a
post, the consequences of wasting time on this sort of thing are
serious indeed. It is also a waste when so many fruitful areas of
inquiry wait to be explored.

The challenge is simple.

Let someone who claims that a "self-explanatory object" is possible
as a complete research result demonstrate that this is a promising
area for inquiry.

So far, I take the lack of a challenge as a preliminary indication
that no one is able to mount a successful challenge. If I am wrong,
the prize is waiting.

If no one claims the prize by September 1, 2002, I will declare
publicly that an artifact cannot in itself function as a complete
research result, and I will explain why. I intend also to state that
none of the scholars, researchers, or designers who has made this
claim in the past has been able to substantiate their claim with
reasoned argument.

It is obvious and NEARLY tautological that complex artifacts such as
exhibits or multimedia projects can serve as complete and valid
research results. Complex artifacts that include text can convey the
research metanarrative that permits a report on the research process.
They become books in extended formats.

Research is a mental activity. It is human, individual, social, and
cultural in nature. This mental and cultural process of research is
invisible. It cannot be embodied in an artifact that does not also
serve as a medium for narrative communication.

The idea of an artifact that conveys or explains research results
without using alphanumeric symbols or words is a contradiction in
terms. Words may be conveyed without being written: a person can
report research without paper, but a person is not an artifact.

I have asked co-chairs of Common Ground to establish the formal rules
of submission, posting them where it seems appropriate, with the
competition ending on September 1. Here are the details of the prize
as I have announced it. I leave it to the co-chairs of Common Ground
to implement the challenge in an appropriate way.

The challenge for the Design Thinking Prize has four parts.

To win the Design Thinking Prize, an entry must:

1) State the general criteria of a complete and valid research result.

2) Distinguish the concept of a research result as research from the
practical or applied outcome of the research.

3) State the basis on which a self-explanatory artifact would meet
the criteria of a complete and valid research result as distinct from
the practical or applied outcome of the research.

4) State criteria on which such a research result would be accepted
as valid and state the criteria that would invalidate such an effort.

That is the challenge.

To the winning challenger, I will give a copy of Henry Petroski's
(1997) elegant book, Invention by Design: How Engineers Get from
Thought to Thing.

To win, a challenger must meet all four parts of the challenge: 1)
define a research result, 2) state clear criteria, 3) articulate the
basis on which such an artifact would be acceptable if someone were
able to produce one, 4) state the criteria that would render the
effort invalid.

In offering this prize, I have asked that a board of expert jurors be
drawn from the conference committee of Common Ground. I have
requested that the jury be selected and announced by May 1, 2002. I
will not serve on the jury, nor will I be involved in the selection
of a winner if any challenger is able to claim the prize. The
decision of the expert jury is final. If the jury agrees that any
challenger has properly met the challenge, I will accept the decision
of the jury as binding.

Entries must be posted to the PhD-Design list at any time before
September 1, 2002. Any individual or group of individuals may enter a
challenge.

I will be at Common Ground with a copy of Petroski's book for anyone
who can win it!

The claims and statements by designers, artists, and others that an
artifact can constitute a complete research result in without
additional narrative or supporting documentation has so far been made
as an assertion. Those who make this claim tend to state the claim
and withdraw. No one has yet been unwilling to support this claim.

In most fields, we expect a scholar who makes a claim of this kind to
demonstrate that his or her claim is valid.

I have offered the challenge to draw out claimants.

Research communities grow when people meet challenges. I do not argue
in absolute terms that the challenge cannot be met. I assert that no
one has met it. I have offered substantive arguments against the
possibility of a "self-explanatory object" as a complete and
self-contained research report. Until someone proves me wrong, I
stand by my assertion.

I am willing to be proven wrong.

I have been waiting for nearly a decade for someone to try.

I will say nothing further on this until September. If you have added
thoughts, however, I will be happy to read them.

"But come now, shift your ground.
Sing of the wooden horse
Epeus built with Athena's help,
The cunning trap that
Good Odysseus brought one day to the heights or Troy,
Filled with fighting men who laid the city waste.
Sing that for me - true to life as it deserves -
And I will tell the world at once how freely
The Muse gave YOU the gods' own gift of song."

Best regards,

Ken Friedman



References

Cross. Nigel. 1993. Editorial. Design Studies. Vol. 14, No. 3, 1993,
pp. 226-227.

Cross. Nigel. 1995. Editorial. Design Studies. Vol. 16, No. 1, 1995, pp. 2-3.

Cross. Nigel. 1999. "Subject: Re: Research into, for and through
designs." DRS. Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 13:43:18 +0000.

Homer. 1996. The Odyssey. Translated by Robert Fagles. New York:
Penguin Putnam.



Keith Russell wrote:

Me thinks you are right Ken, except that you have forced the issue to
the point of tautology - thus all research reports are research
reports and all artefacts are artefacts.

There is a confusion, at a deep level, between the status of primary
and secondary objects in different fields of research such that the
re-port of scientific research is something that comes after the
rifle has been fired (sound being heard after the sight of the
event); whereas the artefact in some research comes after the
secondary event of the hypothesis/report. I might, for example, argue
in my research, that it is possible for a new kind of music - this
music is then presented as the aretfact. The fact that some of the
reporting is before and some after (critical accounts of the musical
performance) is not that different to the dicourse of other research
where the viva acknowledges that there is a knower as well as a known
and that there is no knowledge without both. The attempt, by some
areas of research, to make a fully vivid account of the research
outcome is an acknowledgement that the agonistics of different
domains are different. the failure, of ALL domains, to make fully
explicit their research outcomes, points to the contiuning agaony of
the persuit of knowledge.

I can make an artefact that requires a prior discourse - in this
sense, the artefact is a re-port (a carrying again) The vitality of
various artefacts illustrates the desire, by certain fields, to
ensure that the research is valid (has legs-can walk).

The attemp to locate the vitality in a private language that seeks to
hide from inspection, allows that a lot of crap gets called art. The
location of the artefact is not wrong, I suggest. What is wrong is
the subsequent failure of the community, to carry out the required
VIVA of both the artists and the art work. The discourse is there,
the will to impose its rules seems, often, to be lacking. This is yet
another scandal of fine art that has found its way into the world of
design. Removing this stumbling block, I take to be part of the work
of this email group. Thus I fully support Ken's challenge while also
questioning what we must now do.


--

Ken Friedman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Leadership and Strategic Design
Department of Leadership and Organization
Norwegian School of Management

Visiting Professor
Advanced Research Institute
School of Art and Design
Staffordshire University