Dear Tim,
Thank you for your message. Apologies this is note form, I'm rushing to get ready to travel and cannot write as much as I would like. Again I find myself agreeing in the main with what you write. Except for one thing and I suspect this is central. The main difference as I see it is between actively and deliberately choosing the technical meanings, scope, bounds and delimitations of key conceptual terms such as 'design' and 'designing' in terms of what will offer the best basis for building a coherent body of theory and knowledge (my position) and trying to infer some 'true' meaning from the common usages and generic observations of what others see as humnan design activity (which I am thinking form your email is your position). Please correct me if I am mistaken on this.
I feel that the second route to building design theory will simply not work in epistemological terms (its also my experience over the last 20 or so years of trying!). It simply doesn't offer a basis for making good sound theory . I'm aware it is the 'easiest' , 'preferred' and 'most attractive' approach for moist people, and that most design researchers and authors of the design literature have gone down this path. This doesn't change the reality that it doesn't work. And quite obviously it hasn't worked, otherwise we wouldn't still be having these debates. Some of the reasons for it not working were raised iin the proceedings of that early conference on Design Methods in the UK in 1963 (sorry I don't have the details to hand. The editors were Jones and Thronley and a key paper was by O'Doherty if I remember right.).
I'm interested in how you and others would define these key conceptual terms such as designing and design given ndependent of any of the ciurrent usages and with the sole aim of providing a basis for building a useful and theoretically extenible body of design theory that would work across all the hundreds of areas of human endeavoiur that designing is undertaken.
All the best,
Terry
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-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Smithers
Sent: 9/08/2003 10:49 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: : Refocusing Design Research (was Design Research)
Dear Terry,
Thanks for your message, and yes, I am enjoying the
break, not least `cos I have more time for this kind
of thing.
I agree, we are, as you suggest, closer than it at
first seemed (to me). Certainly on the need for
more careful development and use of terminology.
This is, I think, interesting since we each have
quit different starting points and approaches to our
respective design[ing] research activities.
I also agree with you that while designing as we see
it in practice is a big topic, with many aspects, it
is not everything that we see humans doing. Focusing
on the "human activity of designing" is right, even
only for practical reasons. Designing is
predominately a human-based activity, if not
exclusively so. Whether it is exclusively human or
not can only become clearer after we have a better
understanding of what designing is, in its various
manifestations, and this is best approached by
looking where we can more easily agree we see it
going on. Debates about whether other animals design
things or not seem to be to be premature. This is
one of those "finer details," you mention, I think.
Likewise, debates about whether lots of things we
see humans doing are kinds of designing are
unhelpful to making some progress on developing a
better understanding of what designing is.
Other disciplines have, as you say, also had their
share of terminological struggles, but I do think
that designing, as one of the Sciences of the
Artificial, faces difficulties not seen in the
Natural Sciences, such as Physics, Chemistry,
Biology. Physics, for example is a collective name
for a class of phenomena. (There may be debates
about what phenomenon are included in Physics, but
these are all peripheral, not central.) So, physics
research means doing research on one (or more) of
the phenomenon counted as being within the field. In
this sense physics research is not, as a term, like
design[ing] research, as a term.
For us, design[ing] is THE phenomenon of interest.
While it does involve, include, combine, depend
upon, relate to, many other things that might be
classified as phenomena in their own right, and
which might be investigated in other fields,
including Physics, for example, we take designing to
somehow be a whole thing. This, in itself, is an
assumption: a necessary one, if we are to have a
field we can properly call design[ing] research, but
nonetheless, an assumption that could prove to be
wrong.
But the full range and diversity of even everyday
professional activity is not easily categorised: it
does not come nicely pre-identified and pre-labelled.
So, seeing designing in all this, or indeed other
kinds of human activity we like to think of being
separable, such as planning, scheduling, story
writing, for example, is not usually easy. This is,
perhaps, why setting students design tasks and
investigating what they do, has been a relatively
common form of empirical design[ing] research.
Though how real the designing is might be wondered
at.
So, the phenomenon we are interested in,
design[ing], is not easy to see. This, together
with our as yet not so well developed understanding
of what design[ing] is, means that we are, in
practice, bound to have many differences, debates,
and arguments about what it is we are trying to
investigate, how, and what terms we use to
communicate about our investigations. Seeing real
designing in human activities depends upon our
understanding of designing, and our understanding of
designing depends upon seeing it well in human
activities.
Of course, this make the need for clarity and
precision in our use of terms all the more
important. But it is also what makes design[ing]
research challenging, difficult, and, just as
important, fun.
Best regards,
Tim
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