Dear All

In this post I want to return to the thread of Design Research for
Designers. This is the second and final contribution I want to make to this
thread. Just to recap briefly. In the first thread I suggested a first
criterion for evaluating design research:

>Šany research on this or other designerly topics must satisfy practicing
designers that it proceeds from an understanding and valuing of the
accumulated practical know-how of designers.

In this second contribution, I want to explain a criterion which is more
difficult to understand and apply: position.

For members of this list, a useful starting point may be some remarks made
by klaus krippendorff on March 17:

> 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.

>when we get into the construction of theory in design, one ought to include the
user.

In other contributions Klaus has drawn our attention to a need to develop
ways of thinking that are embodied. What happens, happens between people, or
between people and objects. We do things to each other and to objects.

I agree with Klaus on this. But it does not go far enough. The way Klaus
articulates it, it is simply a critique. It says that as theorists in design
(and possibly other areas) we cannot maintain the false posture of being an
objective outsider--a disembodied map maker who views the landscape from
above. I agree, but there is a next step.

The next step--to continue the geographical metaphor--is to articulate the
logic and actions of a person looking at the landscape from a particular
position on the ground, with a particular point of view, who then moves
through the landscape. The difference this point of view heralds is like the
difference between the vantage point of a map maker and a traveller, though
this is the full extent to which the geographical metaphor applies, because
as human participants we shape the landscape as we move through it. To give
a sense of this, I have often used the idea of a giant trampoline--we
continually deform the surface as we move across it. But even this metaphor
has its limitations because we not only create dynamic 'depressions', as it
were, by our movement across the landscape, we also transform the landscape
and are transformed in turn by it. This, for me is the constant shifting
terrain in which I do my work designing.

How then should we incorporate such a vantage point into our assessment of
other people's research and its relevance to us practicing designers? I
would make no claim to be able to do so across the range of design
activities, but I have been working on this question for some time in my own
area of information design. You may decide whether or not what I have to say
is relevant to your own area of practice.

In the longer paragraph above is a highly compressed account of what I
articulated in much greater detail across a number of works spanning some 20
years. It's called the Logic of Positions. Our webmaster recently posted to
our Institutes web site an old paper of mine that gives a gloss and a mini
history of the development of this idea and its application to survey
research, organisational communication, and cultural studies. You can read
it at: http://www.communication.org.au/html/position.html

I will not elaborate on it here. It would take too long. But I would add a
footnote. I wrote the above paper back in 1987, just as our work at CRIA was
getting under way. Since then the Logic of Positions has informed all our
work, though we have seldom spelled that out in any of our case histories.
It's become routine, like sharpening a pencil before using it, but hardly
worth mentioning. 

We always ask where we are in relation to any information that is before us?
This applies to conversations we have as well as research reports we read.
When we do this, the results are sometimes counter intuitive and often
surprising. I am going to give a paper on this at the 'Creating
Communicational Spaces' conference in early May:

http://www.ualberta.ca/COMSPACE/

Meantime, and returning to the theme of this post, I would suggest that if
you apply the Logic of Positions, you may find that the distinction between
the objective and subjective collapses, and that most so called 'objective'
research involving people is of little value, and surprisingly 'subjective'
in a traditional sense. The same is true of many works in the
Post-modernist/ cultural studies/ hermeneutic camp.

Such findings would put you at odds with most accepted forms of research in
our time. The gap between what is today regarded as acceptable research and
what I'm actually doing is a measure of how far I think Design Research
(including research on creativity) may have to go before it is useful to
practicing designers. This is, of course, just a view from a particular
position.
  
This is my last post. I shall be unsubscribing from the list immediately
after this post. 

I mention this publicly, not to draw attention to myself, but so that those
of you who want to continue this conversation, can do so through my normal
e-mail address, and not wonder why I'm remaining silent on the list. I will
no longer be responding via the list.

I shall, from time to time, drop into the list archive to see what you are
up to. I have met some fascinating individuals through this list and hope I
can stay in touch with them. Naturally, I also remain keenly interested in
the subject. But I no longer feel able to participate in this forum.

David