Dear Victor,
I am surprised by how weak the responses have been to your question.
Instead of discussing what your question may mean, how it may be pursued
from a design perspective, and what the value of such inquiries may be for
design, most of the posts seem rather quick and content to turn to other
disciplines for information. For a list devoted to research, inquiring
minds do not seem to be doing much inquiring.
I don't believe your question should be dismissed so lightly. "Little
questions" like yours can turn into important new lines of inquiry--lines
with refreshing relevancy to the value and practice of design.
For example, your question could be read as going to the heart of the field:
why are we designing? It is a question of purposes and ends--with
"consequences" as a means of discussing the various purposes that designers
have proposed and how well or poorly they have reached their ends in
individual products. Comparison of ends and outcomes seems like the
beginning of a serious debate that could be of value to the design
community--and perhaps even to the design studies community. This is
certainly not another dry methodological question. That horse is tired and
needs a rest.
Most people in the field are well aware of the work in other disciplines
that bear on the consequences of technology and broad product types. Such
work tends to be either very narrow--as in behavioral studies of specific
features or practices--or very broad and vague--as in huge social and
cultural trends or patterns. The narrow studies are sometimes useful in
design, but in a rather narrow way. The broad studies are not very
actionable. The middle ground, which is where designers work, seems not
much studied from a design perspective.
I have no idea where your question may lead in the mind of a creative and
ingenious doctoral student, but part of doctoral education should deal with
opening up questions for investigation.
It would be interesting to see a list of the "little questions" asked by
design researchers in the past. This would probably be more useful to the
research community than encyclopedic lists of answers.
Dick
Richard Buchanan
Carnegie Mellon University
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