Cameron,
You suggest that the main reason for the claim that the concept of 'research through design' is useful is to 'shift the nature of epistemological justification'. I'm assuming in your comment that you mean that the central role of the idea of 'research through design' is to offer a different form of 'nature of epistemological justification' than others found in fields that study or use epistemological justification.
Here I'm puzzled. As far as I can see in the design research literature relating to 'research through design', I cannot find any philosophically serious attempt to argue for a new 'nature of epistemological justification'.
What does stand out as themes in the literature, however, are:
* A body of claims that aspects of designing should be regarded as research - with subtexts that 'therefore, designers are researchers' and 'therefore, design educators should get the status and benfits associated with research for undertaking private design consultancy work'.
* That design activity, theory and related research is somehow exempt or 'different' from the human normality of every other kind of study or practice (This is argued particularly strongly if it is suggested that design should as a mater of course involve science, maths, logical analysis, epistemological consistency, and align with other human explorations and abstract modelling). Subtexts are that 'the usual critiques and checks for validation and quality that humans have found to be useful in all other realms don't apply in the design field', that 'designers, design educators and design researchers don't have to work to learn that 'other stuff' as it isn't relevant' and that 'designers are superior to others'.
* Difficulties are being experienced by design educators and students (in both 'Art and Design' and engineering fields) in tertiary university contexts. The subtext here is that 'the rest of the university system should change so that the traditions of earlier forms of design education can continue'.
* That in university contexts, design educators currently do not do well in status and funding compared to other academics. Also, there are pressures in some design fields to reduce what are regarded by other academics as 'priviledges' or unusually high education costs - e.g low student number studio/workshop sessions and high course costs.
This is a rather different picture from your claim.
My interest is in building an epistemolgically coherent theory foundation for design-focused research that functions well in the present and for the foreseeable future. It is against this measure that I suggest that in terms of technical conceptualisation the idea of 'research through design' is unhelpful. Its use in pub talk is a different matter!
Best regards,
Terry
____________________
Curtin Research Fellow
Dept of Design
Curtin University
Perth, Western Australia
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Visiting Research Fellow
Institute for Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School
Lancaster University
Lancaster, UK
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____________________
-----Original Message-----
From: Cameron Tonkinwise
Sent: 11/05/2004 1:30 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Research through Design
I can't enter the debate about research through
design just at the moment, but reading the posts
just wanted to toss in something between an
observation and a question, certainly not a
position (though I cannot control the meaning
of my writing):
If you ask for an epistemological justification of
something (research through design) that is attempt-
ing to shift the nature of epistemological justifi-
cations, is this not a 'differend'?
Here is a definition of a differend from:
http://www.california.com/~rathbone/local3.htm
differend - Lyotard's term for a dispute resulting from the fact that
one party cannot voice her complaints (or points) because the other
insists on speaking within a different language game or genre of
discourse (such as one person speaking within narration and the other
within speculation).
Here is an amusing storyboard for a short film
about a differend:
http://www.unxposed.com/azar/saiz/differend/differend.htm
Cameron
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