Damn
I was just thinking that Chris Rust and I had some fundamental disagreements about research -- ones that we would have to debate over many a pint of beer. But now I don't have that excuse to go drinking with Chris: I agree 100% with his note, below.
Gee, we will simply have to find some other excuse to drink with one another. I suspect that won't be too difficult. Chicago? London? Seoul? Dare I suggest Sheffield?
Ciao
Don
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Rust
Sent: Sunday, May 03, 2009 10:06 AM
To: Don Norman
Subject: Re: On publication: Advancing the state of knowledge VS. Being recognized
jose luis casamayor wrote:
> No I would not accept it, I can see what you mean, and it would follow Don's comments about that they cannot be evaluated or reviewed with the same 'metrics' or by the same 'experts' because they are just different. I totally agree, the aim of practitioners and researchers in any field are different, so are their outcomes and the way they are evaluated. The problem arrives when they converge in one point: the design-academy; How can we create a common standard to evaluate these different 'practices'?
I think you are still on the wrong track. It's not about evaluating
different practices to a common standard. In research the only practice
that counts is research (as John Langrish famously said in 2000). If the
academy wants to evaluate both research and practice as useful forms of
scholarship, and some do, that's not too difficult to do as long as you
have access to a relevant peer group for each and somebody who
understands both if you want some parity of achievement for the purpose
of promotion or wage setting. But that's really not our business here.
Meanwhile
Chemists do chemistry to investigate research problems, engineers do
engineering similarly but they all put the research problem first and
come up with a method, or set of methods that will help them investigate
their problem.
If you have a research question or problem that you want to investigate
and you can see a way that doing some designing might help you move
towards an answer to that question then you are in a position to do what
some people call "practice-led" research. But it's vital that the
research question comes first and that anything you do is framed as a
method of answering that question.
Then there is the problem of the thesis, the narrative that transmits
what you have discovered and how you discovered it to us. Lots of
people have wanted to use the things they design as all of or part of
their thesis. Nobody to my knowledge has made their designed product do
that job, some have made the material they produced during and from
their designing form part of that narrative. The product may embody the
generalisable knowledge you create, it is unlikely to contain all the
arguments and evidence that show you created that knowledge, that it is
original knowledge and that it is reliable.
And I've heard designers and artists whinge that they have to do 2 PhDs
because they have to do all that drawing and making etc and then they
have to write a book. Well what do they think chemists do? Just write a
book? No they spend a great deal of time doing demanding practical work
just like artists and designers, then they write their book.
Hrmmmphh :o)
Best wishes from Sheffield
Chris
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