Dear Karel and Terry,
These are good questions. I noticed your earlier post, Karel,
suggesting a survey. I'd be curious to read the answers. I wouldn't
want to do the survey myself -- the work load would be terrifying.
As to the literature, we have in our field an intriguing problem. The
design process is a generic process that cuts across many fields and
specific applications. To the degree that there are designerly ways
of working, thinking, or knowing, there is a generic field or
discipline of design that exists theoretically independent of the
target application. Any specific design process is necessarily
embedded in a specific target area with its specific problem spaces
and solution spaces. But the design process itself -- and several
areas of design research -- may exist outside any specific target
field. These potentially draw on the huge, poorly defined literature
Terry mentions. What's equally problematic is that in this large and
somewhat rough-edged literature, different fields often generate
useful information and ideas in fields remote and distinct from the
original problems.
This suggests the need for a far better series of abstracting,
indexing, and sorting mechanisms than we have in place today.
The other side of the problem is the possibility or need to shape the
literature of specific fields and subfields. This is what Terry notes
in describing the literature of fields that have evolved well defined
specialties, each with well defined problems and an evolving
cutting-edge literature.
Both kinds of issues are implicit in the question of progressive
research programs.
We are apparently developing progressive research programs in some
areas of design research. If you think about it, most of the fields
that have a rich developed literature are several centuries older
than design. Mathematics and geometry go back two or three millennia,
physics and engineering 2,500 years, theology two thousand years, and
so on. While there is much work to do, I don't feel that we are doing
all that badly. Rather, the issue is to keep at it and build well.
Yours,
Ken
--
Ken Friedman
Professor
Dean, Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
+61 3 92.14.68.69 Tlf Swinburne
+61 404 830 462 Mobile
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