Hi Dick,
Thanks for your message.
Yes, I say things strongly - they need saying. I can see you disagree with
some of them but I suspect we are not far apart in our reasoning.
My concern is that the weaknesses in the field are potentially wasting a lot
of public and PhD students' money and resources, and potentially screwing up
new researchers' careers.
As you know, I have backgrounds in and do research in other disciplines as
well as 'Art and Design' design so I get a chance to compare standards of
research and PhDs across disciplines. Many other disciplines such as
Management Information Systems and other systems fields are addressing
similar research and practice concerns with human issues as in the 'Art and
Design' arena. Although the specialist 'design research' field of the DRS
and Design Methods Group tradition has been going on for 45 years, these
other disciplines have pulled the mix of humanist/scientific and
research/design dimensions of design theories together faster and in a more
epistemologically more wholesome fashion. See for example the design
research section at ISWorld
http://www.isworld.org/Researchdesign/drisISworld.htm
or Michael Myers' collection of qualitative research resources for design
research for the Association of Information Systems
http://www.qual.auckland.ac.nz/index.htm
Both are resources that may be useful to many design research doctoral
students regardless of discipline.
Yes, I'm sometimes grumpy too! Not so old, but there's some justification in
my grumpiness in hope for change and improvement in design research.
I'm signing off on this discussion in public but happy to carry on
discussion off list if you want to.
Best wishes,
Terry
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