Dear Colleagues,

No one on this list seems to have found a way to compete for the
design Thinking Prize.

While I hope that challengers will yet appear, I am taking this as a
preliminary indication that no one is able to mount a successful
challenge.

If no one claims the prize by September 1, 2002, I intend to 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 - nearly tautological - that complex artifacts such as
exhibits or multimedia projects can serve as complete and valid
research results specifically because they can convey the research
metanarrative that permits a report on the research process. Research
is a mental activity, 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.)

Given the resounding silence on this list, I am amending the
challenge to restrict entries to postings on PhD-Design, the most
active of the major design lists.

I have asked David Durling and John Shackleton 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 David Durling and John Shackleton 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!

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.

I will end with a cinematic aside to Obi-Wan Kenobe, Luke Skywalker,
and all those others who make this claim without showing up to
support their claim.

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

If someone had challenged me to support my claims, I would have done so.

I will say nothing further on this until September.

Best regards,

Ken

--

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