Dear Rosan and Eduardo,

Later today, I'll respond to the substantive issues in the recent thread.
At this moment, I want to offer a simple comment on a matter of logic. Then
I'll get to the idea of clarifying concepts.

Rosan wrote, "If there is a situation as 'predesign', it is a post-design
situation. Designing changes an existing siutation to 'predesign'. We only
can recognize a situation as 'predesign' after a design has been completed.
(This is the same reasoning as that we can only recognize an idea's time
has
come after the fact).

"Research. Design. Design Research. I think that we have enough concepts to
clarify, and there is really no more need for yet another one as 'predesign
research'"

Many successful design firms recognize a "pre-design" phase. This includes
addressing the brief, research issues, and anything else that happens
BEFORE we begin to design.

Since we know we will LATER design, it is possible to recognize a
"predesign" phase before we begin to design. This is a simple fact involved
in recognizing the stages of any process. While I will later argue to
support Eduardo's view on the value of predesign, I am here pointing out
the logically invalid reasoning in suggesting that we only recognize
predesign after the fact on "the same reasoning as that we can only
recognize an idea's time has come after the fact."

This is not even the case of recognizing that the time of an idea has come.
In some cases, this can only take place after the idea emerges. In other
cases, we see that heuristic probes enable us to learn a great deal about
an idea and its appropriate temporal context. History gives us examples of
both situations. Recognizing that an idea has found its time show us
everything from early reconition before the idea is complete to situations
where we do not recognize that an idea found its time until well after the
case. This is highly context dependent, and there are many cases in which
different groups recognize the time of an idea on extremely different
schedules.

In contrast, predesign takes place whenever we recognize that we will later
design. The appropriate analogy is planning a meal and cooking it. If I
know I will be cooking dinner, anything that takes place before I cook is
"pre-cooking." Or, even more clearly, if I know I will be planning a meal
-- that is, designing a meal -- the predesign phase includes such predesign
activities as finding out the number of guests, scheduling, coordinating
with family and guests, determining whether any guests have special food
requirements, and so on. (This is the real rice and potatoes research
method.)

I'll be back to address the substantive point of these posts.

Before vanishing to teach today's session of MKCD (Managing Knowledge,
Creativity, and Design) at Copenhagen Business School, I will add one
point.

One of the purposes of the design research community -- and one of the
charter issues for the PhD-Desigbn list -- is, in fact, clarifying
concepts.

We meet as thinkers, researchers, and scholars precisely to clarify and
understand the concepts of our field.

To me, it simply is not the case that we need only clarify such concepts as
research, design, or design research. I disagree with Rosan's notion that
"we have enough concepts to clarify, and there is really no more need for
yet another one as 'predesign research'" In a fierld as wide as ours, there
are many concepts to clarify and there will be still more. It is one aspect
of any growing and rich field that new concepts continually emerge, along
with the need to clarify them. Changes and growth to the field also mean
that we continually revisit and clarify older concepts.

Those of us in the social sciences see this taking place daily. I suspect
from speaking with colleagues in the natural sciences that this is the case
for them, too.

In another post, Rosan asked what we ought to be doing as the "fifth
generation" of people engaged in design research. I place the term "fifth
generation" in quotes because I have been at this a bit longer. I completed
my PhD in 1976. This was a time when the idea of design research and art
research had not yet come. Those of us who worked in these fields then were
fairly well on our own in doing this work. In the intervening three
decades, much has changed. One aspect of every robust research field is
that people engaged in robust fields move from special pleading, the fear
of borrowing ideas, and normative definitions to a greater emphasis on
intellectual rigor, methdological awareness based on a willingness to
explore and understand potentially useful methods from many traditions, and
carefully developed definitions of many kinds. This includes descriptive
definitions and process definitions as well as normative definitions.

Part of the work of defining and understanding the issues with which we
work in a robust research field involves clarifying concepts. This is
particularly the case with concepts used by designers who work
successfully. In a field where so many designers complain that design
research scholars do not learn from the work of skilled practitioners, it
seems odd to me to reject a concept and process that is one phase in many
successful design projects.

I have no objection to the thought that a specific doctoral student doesn't
want to clarify this concept. We each have the right to choose the issues
on which we focus. In saying this, of course, I also recognize that the
rich range of understanding, and the depth of conceptual and methdological
foundations is an important difference between a first-class research
education and a mediocre education. I'd suggest that Rosan would do better
to recognize the importance of clarifying all these concepts.

Clarifying concepts is part of the work of research. Those of us who work
in design research rather than working in design studios where the pay is
better (and the pace faster) ought properly to be using some of our time to
clarify ideas and distinuguish concepts rather than neglecting or
conflating them.

For me, at least, this is also a difference between the quality I hope to
achieve in research and research that would fail to meet my standards for
conceptual elegance. Dick Buchanan has several times drawn our attention to
a great book titled, "The Craft of Research." This title is a good rubric
for an attitude of mind that emphasizes the craftsmanship involved in
research work.

The craft of research involves specific research skills. It also involves
accepting the challenges of clarifying the ideas of our field.That's what
researchers do. That's what researchers do even when we have more than
enough to do already. I do not accept the notion that "we have enough
concepts to clarify."

To me, that resembles that marvelous story of a patent office director who
suggested in the 1890s that the government could close the patent office on
the basis that everything new and useful had already been invented. (The
story of the story is another story, and I won't tell it here.)

Unless we want to close down design research as of the 1990s, we must
accept the challenge of a field in which we will NEVER "have enough
concepts to clarify."

Best regards,

Ken Friedman