hello kari-hans, klaus, chris, terry and others
Kari-Hans wrote
"Don't you engage in abstraction when you design"?
Never thought about it that way. I must confess that I tend to use the term
representation to mean what you described as abstraction in your post.
While I find Klaus’ and Chris’ responses very interesting and convincing,
I am interested in knowing if there is any reason why you think ‘abstraction’
may be a more useful or more appropriate term.
Terry wrote
"You raise the issue of where in design research the meta-theoretical approach
makes most sense".
Sorry Terry, I am afraid that that was not my point. The key in my question is
"is abstraction the right criterion to structure design theories?"
What is the value of my question? The meta-structure frames the way we see,
discourse, and probably evaluate design theories of any type, and thus has much
implication for design research. And especially because your meta-structure is
hierarchical rather than ecological, to me, it is very important to understand
the assumption of choosing abstraction as the criterion for structuring.
We should not take it as a given.
When I said that the field of design is so much to do with ‘things’ concrete,
I meant to say that the final product (in the widest sense of the word) of designing
has much relevance to people’s day-to-day lives.
And here I think Klaus sensed where I was coming from when he said:
"thus abstractions and theories form hierarchies that leave no space for the abstractor
or theorist, hanging in the universe as if human beings do not matter…this is why i
suggest that we should not let theories and abstractions govern our lives".
(To avoid misunderstanding: I like theories. it is because I believe in it that is
why I question it … another paradox of life).
Terry, my worry of the meta-structure is that it seems to be very concerned
with internal validity (which of course is very important in theory building)
but it does it for the price of a design point of view.
I am in agreement with David Sless (with little surprise) that we need a design
point of view to see, discourse and evaluate theories. And here I must appeal
to all of you:
it is a lot easier to talk about theories from established scientific points of view
with the safety net of thousands of references; it is a lot more difficult to articulate
something a bit more original, so we must allow and tolerate different voices
in our design research community, including this list. To go a step further,
we should cultivate those strange voices.
Best Regards Rosan
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