Hi All,
I'm just about to board another flight, this time homeward bound from
London to Melbourne. So a few quiet moments to reflect on posts to
this list.
As the old hands will know, we have been here before. Discussions of
intention and other mental constructs recurs on this list without
productive outcome, and that is inevitable. But it's interesting that
when I first joined the list, very few of us that contributed took a
post Wittgenstinian view. I'm heartened that this is no longer the
case and that many people have moved towards this way of thinking,
releasing us from the mentalist shackles.
One of the consequences of this way of thinking, if one is prepared to
take it, is that it relieves one of the burden of offering
explanations for such things as intention, knowing, desire and
thinking, as antecedents to theory in design. This is a wonderful
opportunity for design researchers and phd candidates to focus on
designing without the need to doff ones cap to every discipline within
the social and behavioural/cognitive sciences before doing useful
design research.
This is not to suggest an approach which lacks rigour or careful
articulation, far from it.
There is here an opportunity for a rigourous evidence based approach
to design research that truly informs design practice. Rather than an
approach to theory that endlessly elaborates itself into the
intellectual space available, I have found it quite useful to see how
little theory I need to account for an evidence based design practice.
Without the evidence base as a check, however, you are doomed to
endless, though highly entertaining, elaboration.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
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