Colleagues,
When I hear a comment such as "There is some confusion I think about the
core problems of researching design thinking" I am always amused. Not to
pick on Terry but to raise a more general issue, I wonder what the person is
really trying to say. Is it a comment about confusion or is it really a
complaint that people don't see the issues in the same way as the speaker
sees them.
If it were really so simple as people getting it right or getting it wrong,
then life would be easy and research would involve merely technical issues.
The problem is--and it is, indeed, a wicked problem--that people see things
in different ways. And the different ways each may have very reasonable
grounds and lead to useful, interesting, and even true insights if we
understood those grounds.
An important philosopher of the twentieth century once remarked that the
outstanding fact of intellectual history is the persistence of different
ways of seeing the world. One can cope with this fact either by dismissing
other ways as confused and misguided or by exploring alternative approaches
with a willing suspension of disbelief (aka tolerance). This does not mean
abandoning one's own beliefs, but it does mean recognizing that alternative
views may throw important light on the reality of what we are studying.
Between dogmatism and relativism there is a middle ground of intelligent
discussion and argument--a middle ground of inquiry.
I thought that by this point in the development of design we could give up
the idea of a monistic truth and get on with inquiry in all of its forms,
suited to the complexity of truth. Monism is certainly one reaction to the
complexity of the world--for example, the complexity of design--but I
believe that it too often leads to mere semantic disputes and controversy
rather than substantial inquiry.
For example, Herb Simon certainly recognized his theory of design as
"reductive" in intent--he says exactly this at one point. But one does not
have to share his reductive philosophy in order to appreciate what he
accomplished--and to perceive what he did not accomplish and what requires
other approaches.
A sophisticated pluralism is needed in design today more than ever if we are
to advance our understandings of the field. There may, indeed, be some
design research that is simply wrong in fact or method or conclusion. But
more likely, researchers are struggling down different pathways toward
understanding. Whether we agree with them or not, they need and deserve
sympathetic and critical readers who can engage their core ideas and help
them to move forward. Dabbling in "fallacies" without understanding the
philosophical roots and direction of an inquiry is just too precious. Chris
Alexander points out the irony of the limited understanding of logic that
this involves.
A sophisticated pluralism--sympathetic and critical at the same time--is
vitally important to building sustained conversations in design today.
Richard
Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University
On 3/31/07 6:44 AM, "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
excerpt:
> The only area that is really specific to design research is research that
focuses on the thinking, feeling, creating, deciding, judging and other
internal human activities involved in designing.
There is some confusion I think about the core problems of researching
design thinking.
Some see it as too hard and prefer to retreat into superficial simple and
fallacious representation of what happens when someone is designing, such as
models of design process, reflective practice etc. I agree that it can be
useful even if it isn't true to what happens.
Itıs a problem when people hold it up that it is the reality of human design
thinking. It's a kind of self-delusion and there are several reasons people
offer:
1. To do otherwise is too hard.
2. Designers who have become design researchers can't understand the
material
3. If everyone does things differently then how can you make a theory about
it (your comment).
4. Its too difficult to bridge the different disciplines that need to be
brought together.
3. is important to tackle first. At root, there is no overall difference in
the way that we as individuals do designing. We do it biologically and we
have similar bodies. There is a similarity at a very deep level of
biological processes. Theorising can reliably start at this point. The
problem is that humans at a more superficial level of thoughts, feelings,
don't design the same way - not even if they repeat the same thought in
quick succession. The problem is that it is at these and higher levels that
>the design research field has tried to make theory and assumed it reality
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