nsenga,
you plead for "gather(ing) solid and undisputable evidence observed in
various layers of reality, as back up to our design proposals, briefs, etc."
this sounds superficially appealing. but what do you count as evidence?
design, the way i understand, develops proposals for actions that bring
forth a desirable future. the future yields evidence only in the future,
not in the presence or in the past. it does not theorize based on available
data. it proposes something that does not yet exist. to have a proposal
accepted and enacted requires trust, not evidence. there are methodologies
available to generate the trust needed for a design to be trustworthy, but
this is not evidence in the strict sense of evidence for scientific
hypotheses.
klaus
-----Original Message-----
From: Nsenga Francois-Xavier [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 12:54 PM
To: Klaus Krippendorff
Subject: RE : Three motives for design -- reply to Klaus
Dear Klaus,
First, I personally do think designers shouldn't put so much emphasis on
"motivations" as do Psychologists. We may however, eventually, if needed,
refer to their studies and findings, depending on the design project at
hand.
Second, I tend to differentiate the role of a designer from the role of the
"legislator", one who would sit asking questions and listening to answers
(the Ethnographic approach), and then draw judgements sentenced in
theories... By the way, a large part of design questions are necessarily
embarassing, in that they are very personal; they pertain to how one deals
more or less intimately with such and such artefact. So, engaging up to that
extend in search for answers taken as design answers or data (they are more
psychological, psychiatric, sociological, etc.), that would rather turn us
into intruders, voyeurs, and gratuitous invaders of people privacy. Our
field has not (and doesn't need) got the aureaole of neither the
aristocratic type of conspicuous objectivity, nor the "natural" sciences
type of hypothetically rational objectivity.
Third, instead of the traditional academinc and elitist communication
pattern, mostly characterized by a top-down exchange between, on one side
the elite researcher (in authority of enquiring, i.e. asking biased
questions), and on the other side, the selected information provider
convoked to answer those precise and purposely crafted questions, and then
condemned to live up with the guilt of having voiced out his/her
motivations, true or false,
I would rather propose to designers the approach of searching evidence to
back their proposed options throughout respective assemblies of humans and
non-humans.
The main feature of this type of enquiry wouldn't be to devise questions
meant to be "asked", and expecting individuals to answer us with their
"true" or untrue motives. Rather, we should engage into directl and/or
indirect investigations (= to track the footprints, for a given period of
time) of the various inter-actions between various members of the two camps,
the human and the non-human, and the outcomes really befallen to each. Not
to devise theories of whatever kind, but to gather solid and undisputable
evidence observed in various layers of reality, as back up to our design
proposals, briefs, etc.
Regards
Francois
Montreal
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