Tunstall, Elizabeth wrote:
> Or is it as Chris proposes that the community and its practices are so
> varied that there is no ideal artifact?
>
It's not variations in the community or practices that interest me here,
rather that different contexts and different questions lead us to
different forms of contribution.
From doctoral projects in design that I have seen in recent years I can
identify:
a set of mechanical principles for a class of product
an operational method for business
an understanding of the complementary values of physical and virtual
modelling
a set of practices that embed acoustics in textile design
a technique that supports the design of personalised digital craft objects
an approach to capturing the performative knowledge of craftspeople (and
an associated theory of apprenticeship learning)
an understanding of how people appropriate packaging for second use
and a theory that transfers a set of principles from physical space to
digital space.
Each of these was embodied in a document that followed more or less
conventional lines but each also involved some other artefacts that were
significant as instruments or embodiments of the research and its
contribution to knowledge. If there is one unifying idea it is that the
research has tended to result in some kind of operational principle, but
expressed in widely varying forms. Personally I value the performative
element that is revealed in the artefacts - diagrams, drawings,
prototypes, recordings - as an important validation of the process and
product of the research.
I once examined a project in which the student set out their starting
theory, gave a brief description of their way of working then moved
straight to the final diagram that set out their model for action. This
was impossible to value or test (although it was very plausible) so we
asked him to set out his workings - his sketchbook of diagrams and false
starts. (He had not done so because he assumed we would only value the
"correct" final answer)
Once we saw the process in its original form it was clear that he had
worked through the possibilities in an effective way that mobilised the
preceding research to synthesise a valid model. He might have given us a
blow by blow written account of the whole thing but that would have been
extremely difficult to follow and less effective than the sketchbook
which demonstrated the quality of his thinking as well as its flow. So
the artefacts of the research included both a formal diagram (with text
explanation) and a sketchbook of false starts and explorations. The main
artefact was an operational method bound up in these things.
This business of contribution seems to be the key to doctoral research
in design. You cannot ask the question every week but at certain points
in the project, at least once each year, the supervisor needs to ask the
student to rethink and reframe their idea of what the contribution to
knowledge will be and why it has changed from their previous idea. One
of the reasons for this is the very openness that I have indicated, we
can have no fixed assumptions about the kind of thing we will produce,
but rethinking that question is a most valuable practise.
best wishes
Chris
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