Dear Robbie,

Thanks for your query yesterday. You ask a question that is significant
to our entire field:

“... raises a question I have been thinking about for a while. I was
discussing only yesterday with my supervisors the nature of design
research; where the written word is a large part of our communication,
but not the only part. In many situations, mine included, the research
has resulted in manufactured products. Should we design researchers
consider these artefacts as a publication? If so, who will count them?”

You have asked three questions here, so this will be a long post. Along
the way, I will also respond to Don Norman’s post, as well as to Chris
Rust, Pradeep Yammiyavar, and Jose Luis Casamayor.

The first question you ask is the obvious one:

1) Can an artifact constitute a research publication? If so, how?

The second question is equally important. It is implicit in your query
rather than explicit. I infer from your query that you are a doctoral
student. In doctoral research, the question of artifacts takes on a
second dimension. That dimension is the specific nature of doctoral
study and the role that text and methodological inquiry play in a
doctoral thesis. Thus, the second question:

2) What is the nature of doctoral study as distinct from general
research? What role do text and methodological inquiry play in a
doctoral thesis?

The third question is whether – or why – people who design things need
words at all. The third question is:

3) Can artifacts constitute a research publication? If so, how? If not,
why is it that things cannot themselves consuetude a research
publication?

There have been heated and occasionally profound debates around these
questions for the past decade.

An on-line workshop examined some of these issues in 2006. Chris Rust
convened the workshop as part of a review on practice-led research in
art, design, and architecture funded by the UK Arts and Humanities
Research Council.

While the conversation ranged across a wide range of issues, many of
these issues converge on your question. You will find a full archive of
the workshop at

http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/AHRC-Workshop-PL

One great virtue of the workshop is the fact that it took place over a
period of several weeks in June and July, and messages generally ran
around 500 words. With fewer than 400 concise messages, you will be able
to read the entire debate in an afternoon.

This is a brief note to outline the nature of the three questions in
your query to me. I will try to answer each of these in a careful
response over the next few days.

Best regards,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean

Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia

Telephone +61 3 9214 6755
www.swinburne.edu.au/design


Robbie Napper wrote:

—snip—

... raises a question I have been thinking about for a while. I was
discussing only yesterday with my supervisors the nature of design
research; where the written word is a large part of our communication,
but not the only part. In many situations, mine included, the research
has resulted in manufactured products. Should we design researchers
consider these artefacts as a publication? If so, who will count them?

—snip—

Jose Luis Casamayor wrote:

—snip—

How would you define a new physical artefact that perform a new function
that can solve a current crucial problem, and that has for that purpose
had to develop new knowledge? It would be good practice, research, etc.?

This question is related with Robbie’s question (what i think he meant
in his question). If one practitioner and one ‘researcher’ present their
‘research’ outcomes, namely a paper and a physical artefact, and both
are presented to an academic peer review (which is the one that counts
for academic/research purposes) which one would be considered or they
would be cosidered equally?

—snip—

Pradeep Yammiyavar wrote:

—snip—

The problem seemswithout much contemplation , by the Designer community. I suspect this
is a subconscious act by designers to retain their ‘disciplinary
boundary’ which in turn defines their ‘identity’. (We are Designers
therefore we are different than others - syndrome) Instead of Design
Research the term ‘Research in Design’ could be more apt wording.

The never ending dichotomy between ‘Practice’ and ‘Academics’ in Design
discipline is another unnecessary category to base arguments on. All
professions have a practice component. A Chemist practices his/ her art
of chemistry as much as a Designer does. There need not be any
exclusivity about practice in Design. This does not mean one is hinting
at a lower value for ‘ practice’ in design!

Research, be it in Physics, Chemistry , Architecture or Design is also a
type of ‘Practice’. Researchers are practitioners of their ‘skills’.
There is as much of Creative effort involved in ‘Research’ as in
‘Design’.

—snip—

Chris Rust wrote:

—snip—

In both of the latter cases artefacts play an important role in the
research and if we don’t allow them to form part of the narrative we are

not doing a full job, although as I’ve said a researcher has to “own”
their research and that usually requires some kind of narrative account
that will involve written descriptions and arguments. However it is
worth noting that before Graham Whiteley produced his prototype arm
nobody could make such a thing, afterwards any competent mechanical
engineer could look at the prototype or drawings and understand fairly
easily how to make it and what it did. It also did not require a great
deal of forensic skill to see the intentions behind the prototype. What
you could not see without the thesis, including the intermediate
drawings and models, was to see the process of inquiry that led to and
validated the prototype

—snip—