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Subject:

Re: : Refocusing Design Research (was Design Research)

From:

Tim Smithers <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Tim Smithers <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 23:15:35 +0200

Content-Type:

text/plain

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text/plain (171 lines)

Reply

Reply

Dear Terry,

Thanks for taking the time to reply, albeit briefly,
for the moment.

We are in closer agreement than you supposed, I
think. I fully agree with your position; on the
need for

   "... 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 ...,"

but you are right, that this IS my position too, was
not clear from my previous message. So, you are
right to ask about this.

Empirical observation, study, and reporting of real
designing is a necessary part of a better
understanding of designing. This kind of work can
take different forms, and produce different kinds of
data and results. But, this kind of work is NOT
sufficient, and, in particular, does not lead in and
of itself to theory development. However,
theoretical understanding of designing is what is
needed before we can properly claim to understand
designing, I think. Empirical observations and
studies, of whatever kind, are not enough.

I take the view that there are different kinds of
theories of designing that we can seek to develop:
theories that are based upon different ways of
considering designing. These different theories
need not be competing nor contradictory. Indeed, if
they are each good theories of the different 'faces'
of designing, then they should be compatible, and
perhaps even combinable. I therefore expect there
to be 'theoretical collectives' to express our
theoretical understanding of designing: collections
of compatible (possibly combinable) theories of
different aspects of designing. This is different
from the way we expect theoretical understanding to
develop in Physics, and other Natural Sciences. In
Physics we expect there to be only one theory for
some particular physical phenomenon or phenomena,
gravity, or aerodynamic lift, for example, not
collections of theories.

This is why investigating designing (design
research) is necessarily a multi-disciplinary and
inter-disciplinary activity.

Now, to the central point you make about terminology
in theoretical development. I completely agree with
you that the terms we use, need to be carefully
constructed as a natural and necessary part of good
theory development. It is not a matter of trying to
extract terms and their proper meanings from their
use in the designing we study, or that others use to
report on how people design things. Indeed, their
is often a lot of work to do to 'see through' the
terms designers, managers, researchers, and others
use to talk about and describe designing, to see
what they are really pointing to and talking about,
to be able to see what kinds of theoretical concepts
are needed to explain and give account to what is
observed, and what is not observed.

Theory development requires forming and developing
new concepts; concepts that we do not necessarily
see in observations and any resulting data, or need
when presenting and reporting such observations.
They are needed to (theoretically) explain the
observations. This is what theories are for, to
offer explanations for things we observe; to remove
mysteries and puzzlement.

These new theoretical concepts need names, terms. It
is these terms that we need also to invent. We may,
and often do, use the same words as we see used to
talk about and describe designing, but to use the
same word is NOT to use the same term: not
necessarily. Using the same words to mean
different things, to take on different
terminological roles is not something to be avoided.
It is something to be done with care, clarity, and
precision. It is a normal and natural aspect of
using any Human Natural language, and theory
development is not peculiar in doing this.

Of course, this does not make life easy, either for
the authors of theories, nor for those who try to
understand, or test, or apply these theories. Doing
any of these, with respect to some particular
theory, may require us to suspend some strong
personal uses of words as terms, in order to
understand and properly interpret the way the same
words are used as terms in the theory in question.

Nonetheless, this is how I think it is, and needs to
be. There are no meanings of theory terms to be
found in the designing we observe and study. The
development of the meanings of theory terms is a
proper and inseparable part of the theory
development process. It is only in this way that
such "key conceptual terms," to use your term, can
be built to be independent and autonomous of current
usage and different usage in talking about and
describing designing--as you rightly, I think, point
out they need to be.

What there is to do, is to find good clear ways of
relating what our theory (or theories) say, to what
we observe in real designing, and to communicate
this effectively to others who are not authors of
the theory involved. But this is the same kind of
communication responsibility any body doing research
has, in whatever field.

I have written of these ideas here, as if they are
un controversial. I do this for the sake of brevity
and clarity. However, my experience is, perhaps
like yours, that many people are shocked by, and
oppose the idea that theoretical terms, and thus the
concepts they name, must be constructed as part of
the theory development, rather than somehow
extracted from the empirical observations and data.
Key theoretical concepts are not induced from
empirical data.

In responding to these some times quit fierce
reactions, I have tried to use clear examples that
others will probably be familiar with. One of my
favourites is the concept of inertial mass. You do
not need the concept of inertial mass of bodies to
describe and talk about the observed motion of
bodies, but you do need it to explain the described
motions. It is a theoretical concept and term. You
cannot measure mass directly, there is no
mass-meter. You have to derive the mass of a body
from the values of other physical quantities: the
weight and acceleration due to gravity, for example,
or the force applied and acceleration caused
(assuming that the mass is constant). But this
derivation needs the theory (Newtonian mechanics, in
this case) to identify the relationship between
force, and rate of change of momentum, and the
definition of momentum. Today, the concept of mass
is so familiar that many people do not realise that
it is not a physical quantity like force and
acceleration, that can be measured directly. And,
many simply confound mass with weight, and thus take
the kilogram as a unit of weight, which of course
it is not. The result is that, even when talking to
engineers, who ought to know better, there is often
much confusion. Nonetheless, it is only the theory,
Newtonian mechanics, that can offer a proper basis
for clarification and hence understanding, not any
amount of enquiry and insight in to the use of
terms like weight and mass by engineers and others.

Well, do you think we are closer on this, or would
you still see some differences between us?

Best regards,

Tim

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