Dear Chris, Ken and Eduardo,
I did not realize that there is a meta-inquiry thread running here! I would
like to enter into this ongoing conversation.
I think Ken's formulation of "the goal of design research is understanding
how-and why-to design". I agree that there is always a know-how implication
when the inquiry is geared towards understanding the 'how' of the design and
by Ryle's discussion of how know-how and know-that are sometimes
interweaved, the qualified statement is possibly an overall rounder one for
the meta-inquiry of design research.
That said, though 'hows' and 'whys' are great questions to begin any inquiry
process, I think they may be a little too general for intuitive, but
reasonable answers like, for why: I design because the present state is
unsatisfactory in terms of X criterion when compared to a preferred state;
and similarly for how: I design using this process due to X contingent
circumstances. Although there are no good reason why simple and good answers
should negate the necessity of a good question, my suspicion is that a
simple and general question may not get us very far in what we may be aiming
for collectively as a field?
Are there finer grained questions we can ask? Or can there be finer grained
goals beyond the hows and the whys?
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Sent from the PhD Design forum at Nabble.com.
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