Hello,

From different viewpoints, Ken and  David  have recently argued for particular modes of discussion. I feel this issue is much more important than it appears. For me, there are several reasons that suggest it's time to seriously address problems of modes of discussion and analysis in design research. I believe it's an important issue  blocking the development of the field and causing many problems with theory and concepts, especially in areas such as 'creativity', 'design', 'design  methods', 'intuition'.

I've appended some thoughts below. These include some  characteristics of  particular problems in design research discourse; a suggestion as to why the these characteristics occur; a method to address these discourse problems; and some benefits that I've found in applying the method.

This two penny worth is not a call to halt discussions. It's an call for strategic meta-analysis to improve the discourse of design research because present modes of discussion and analysis don't seem to have been helpful. This has been noted by  several contributors in the recent discussions on 'creativity', transformative learning and the differences between engineers and designers.  

In what follows, I'm suggesting the problem lies in the way we are discussing and analysing, rather than the  design research issues themselves. The following note is not complete and there are probably lots of mistakes in it. It's intended to raise the issue rather than be the definitive word on it.

I welcome comments, thoughts and criticisms both on and off list.

Best wishes from Perth,

Terry

______________________

Dr. Terence Love
Love Design and Research
PO Box 226
Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel/Fax +61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
______________________


===============================

Some thoughts about the ways design researchers discuss and analyse that have consistently resulted in theory problems

There have been problems with the formation of theory foundations for design research since the 1950s. The problems have been consistently reproduced. I suspect they are due to the ways design researchers use language to try to build theory.  The following list brings together some of the sorts of issues that seem to be part of the problem:

·     The discussions on creativity and other core concepts have not lead to conclusions that clearly advance the field.
·     Recent postings to PhD-Design on 'creativity' show many similar characteristics to earlier postings on 'design' and to earlier (printed) analyses about a wide range of similar concepts such as 'inventiveness', 'knowledge', 'information', and 'systematic methods'. 
·     Design researchers have been having a problem with defining the core basic concepts for around 50 years. 
·     The problem seems to be due to the ways that we as design researchers comceptualise, discuss and analyse issues rather than the issues themselves. 
·     None of the core concepts are, in epistemological terms, particularly difficult to address. There are a small number of alternative possibilities for the meanings of each. A key part of the discussion is simply to choose which meanings are preferable for building theory in this field. I.e. the question is 'What will we use the term 'creativity' to mean?' rather than 'What is creativity?'
·     The discussions seem to have a sort of intellectual muddiness that blocks the use of critical analysis and careful productive theory making.
·     Academic discussion and analysis in the design research literature and on the phd-design list is characteristically qualitatively different from theoretically more productive fields.
·     The practical weaknesses of discussion and analysis in the design research field (as in problems in defining key concepts) are understandably echoed in our weak status and  reduced research funding.

To summarise, a helicopter view suggests that the design research field is marked by a particularly consistent, characteristic and problematic way of discussing and analysing issues since the 1950s. Significant adverse effects of this old mode of  discourse are problems with definitions, terminology, core concepts and theory foundations. 

The question is 'What is it we do so consistently that is so problematic?'

To recap, the difficulty appears to be caused by the way that design researchers discuss and analyse - the concepts are intrinsically relatively straightforward. The theoretical perspectives, empirical and analytical methods of design research are nothing especially difficult. It appears the problem lies in the way design researchers discuss and analyse. Finding a simple explanation of what we do in discussion that consistently causes problems potentially offers great benefits to the field. 


One explanation is the inappropriate use of nominalisation. Nominalisation is unusually widespread in the design research field in discussions about design theory. The adverse effects of nominalisation  would explain most of the difficulties, errors, muddiness of analysis, and poor conceptualisation in discussions between design researchers.

Nominalisation refers to the creation of nouns (and associated adjectives and adverbs) from verbs (nominalise - to give a name). (E.g. nominalisations of the verb 'play' include  the noun 'play', the adjective and adverb 'playful') The use of nominalisations can cause many problems in critical and theoretical discourse  including:  increased ambiguity, a reduction in precision, shifts in meaning, increased number of meanings, increased unnecessary value-ladenness (examples below). These problems apply not only to the activity that is nominalised. It also results in these problems for associated  parts of sentences and discourses . In essence, nominalising a verb significantly reduces the information carried. In many cases, the nominalization is intrinsically epistemologically invalid whilst being apparently linguistically correct. This is particularly problematic because such texts appear to make sense regardless of their epistemological (and hence theoretical) errors.

Examples of nominalization are widespread and associated problems of conceptualisation are clear in silly cases. For example, the nominalisation of 'sit' (verb) into 'sittingness' (noun) results in a shift from 'The cat sits on the mat' to something like 'The relation between the cat and the mat is one of sittingness'.  The meaning of the verb form is sharp and relatively unambiguous 'the cat sits on the mat'  refers to 'that cat', 'that mat', and it is 'that cat that is behaving in that way' (sits). There is nothing else that is left partially said or can be interpreted very differently. 

Changing the verb 'sits' to the noun 'sittingness' makes the sentence abstract and much less precise in many ways - for example, the relation might be one of 'sittingness' but its not exactly clear whether that cat is, actually, at this moment, sitting on that mat (the key concept of the verb sentence). More importantly, the invention of the concept of 'sittingness' immediately corrupts the relationship between the physicality of the situation (cat sits on mat) and the discourse. Without any reference to whether there is a physical actualisation of the attribute of 'sittingness' , this new nominalised concept and term is now introduced into the discourse as if it is physically and conceptually legitimate. The new and epistemologically problematic (in physical terms at least) concept becomes then integrated into discourse by the use of the usual linguistic and analytical tools appropriate to be applied to nouns, which enables other outcomes to be apparently legitimately  derived. 

So, what are the problems? In the main, the problems stem from the corruption of any discourse that develops as a result of the inclusion of an inappropriately nominalization and its further manipulation in language. 

A reasonable question is 'Why would anyone want to do nominalization?' The answer is because it is a very powerful technique of persuasion and personal manipulation.  The use of nominalisation lies at the core of effective techniques for manipulating peoples behaviour in fields as diverse as advertising, political speechmaking and seduction. The main defences against manipulative techniques based on nominalisation are techniques and practices of critical analysis and critical thinking plus a rejection of the nominalised concepts.

Research and theory making depends on critical thinking. The outcomes of nominalization work against critical thinking and hence are unhelpful in the practice of research. This, to me, seems to be especially  important in design research. 

The problems of nominalization in design research occur even in the simplest concepts. For example, it is relatively unambiguous to say, 'Dick created that email'. It refers to a particular Dick, a particular email, and specifies what Dick did in terms of a particular behaviour ('creating' - rather than 'writing', 'posting' 'editing' etc).  To specify the same event in terms of a nominalization of the verb 'create' automatically reduces the precision, and makes the situation more ambiguous and open to reinterpretation. This is especially problematic in research becasue the usual intention of research and theory making is precision  - of making theories that have exact singular and accurately defined meaning.  This is different from facilitating people deriving multiple meanings from a text, in activities such as art, and in political and commercial manipulation. In these cases, facilitating reinterpretation to enable manipulation might be regarded as helpful.

In design research and design theory, many  problems of developing the field are due to  unnecessary 'muddiness' of the discourse. This muddiness seems to stem almost completely from nominalization problems.  The worst problems are in the nominalization of key terms such as 'designing', 'creating', 'feeling', 'emoting', 'thinking', 'communicating', 'informing', knowing', 'managing'. For each of these the verbs are precise, simple, relatively unambiguous and can be tied directly to the physicality of situations.  In each it is possible to directly perceive either the outcome (e.g. the physical changes of emoting) or the activity itself. 

In terms of theory making,  nominalization of the verbs defining the above activities, however, is usually epistemologically problematic resulting in increased ambiguity and slackness (and sometimes errors of logical derivation) that are unhelpful in research contexts. For example, nominalisation of 'Dick created that email' might result in 'Dick's email is creative' or 'Dick wrote a creative email'. These are logically different to and cannot be derived from the original. The problem is that at first glance the connection seems plausible due to the linguistic consistencies (they include 'Dick', 'email' and something to do with 'create').  This hoodwinking of human logical facilities and good sense is what makes nominalisation so problematic in research contexts and so powerful in persuasion.

One of the worst aspects of nominalisation is the creation of noun objects that are epistemologically invalid though linguistically apparently correct. The problem with these objects is that application of the usual language processes gives people the illusion that these noun objects ( with no connection to physicality) have agency (that is they can do things). When 'Dick created that email', the agency resides with Dick - 'he did it'. It might be possible to dig a bit deeper into the physicality of Dick's functioning and derive a more detailed physical explanation, but the essence of the agency is that it is Dick (in whatever form he is conceived) that 'created'. It certainly (unless magic is now part of scientific discourse) wasn't the email creating itself (as in a 'creative email'). To allocate agency to even more abstract but epistemologically problematic concepts such as 'creativity' results in serious theory problems because of the lack of epistemological validity and the increased ambiguity. To say 'Creativity caused the email from Dick' faultily ascribes agency to 'creativity', and results in a sentence that makes apparent sense but is epistemologically corrupt.

Inspection of the design research literature shows similar problems with the term 'design'.  For example, it is almost trivially easy to make singular sense out of 'Chris is designing a chair'. It is not so easy to make singular sense out of 'This is a 'designed' chair' (are there chairs that are not in some way designed?). It is getting a bit close to magic and a long way from singular theory to say 'Design created this chair'. To make sense in theory terms, there would have to be some very precise answers to 'What is this "Design" entity?' 'How is it physically actualized?' 'How does its agency operate?' 'How does it physically create things?' and a raft of other questions.

So, if the problem is nominalisation, what is the cure? The ways of addressing the problem are relatively obvious - emphasis on verbs and critical analysis, and the avoidance of nominalisation and nominalised nouns, adjectives and adverbs.

For PhD students, this approachis helpful in several ways. First, it clarifies academic writing immensely (active verb-based writing). Second, it provides a powerful tool for critically analysing other peoples' texts and theories: in the literature review of a thesis, in identifying the real conceptual issues at the 'cutting edge' where the students' research problem lies, in any section in which theoretical perspective and method are discussed, and, perhaps most usefully, in sections in which the candidate presents their interpretations of their findings. 

Practically, the method has four steps:
1       Look in the text for noun, adjective and adverb forms of key activity words  (designing, creating etc)
2       Rewrite these sections using the verb forms of the same words
3       Look for inconsistencies, multiple meanings, errors and other problems. From experience, these will stand out. 
4       Rewrite to make sense

Reducing the nominalisation problems in design research is an immediate, easy and helpful basis for contributing to the field by critiquing the literature to remove its messiness.  

Using verb forms also offers the benefit that it clarifies thinking by making more obvious one's choice of concepts and language. This also gives a check for epistemological validity. For example, take the sentences:

"Ken created a furore with his email" 

'Ken caused a furore with his email"

"Ken sent an email that raised a furore"

Focusing on the verbs offers insight into exactly which choice of words makes most sense or best fits the intentions of the author.

A side thought is that there are quite a lot of potential PhD and other research projects  whose main methodological focus could be addressing the nominalisation problems in particular theory and practice areas.


To summarise, I'm suggesting that:

·     Nominalisation in design research discourse is  a primary root of conceptual, terminological and epistemological problems in Design Research and Design Theory
·     There is a general lack of awareness in the field of the problems of nominalisation in research and theory making ( e.g. increased ambiguity, a reduction in precision, shifts in meaning, increased number of meanings, increase in unnecessary value-leadenness of terms. )
·     The current problems in discussion about 'creativity' are part of the consistent problem milieu caused by inappropriate nominalisation in discourse.
·     That the literature that depends on core concepts of design research is plagued with problems due to nominalisation
·     That critical analysis and the use of verb forms are the main antidote to nominalisation problems.
·     That identifying and addressing nominalisation problems is a very powerful tool for doctoral candidates and design researchers.
·     That a four-step method for clarifying theory is: 1 Identify nominalisations, 2 Rewrite in verb form, 3 Look for inconsistencies, multiple meanings, errors and other problems, 4 Rewrite to make sense.


The usefulness of the above four step method is easy and quick to test. Simply try it on any design theory text (preferably not your own!).

Best wishes,

Terry

==================================

(c) T. Love 2003 Fair use permitted