Dear David,
Thank you for great questions.
When I started to answer them, I realised I've been explaining things from
the perspective of a new field of design research, the 'Epistemology of
Design Knowledge and Theory'. This field of Design Research is not actually
that new. It is more that it has been hidden or ignored. It is found only
in a very small number of sub-fields of Design.
This 'new' field of Design research focuses on the 'Epistemology of Design
Knowledge and Theory' and its application in design practice, design
theory-making and design research. My previous posts since the 90s have
pointed to this approach but I hadn't realised till now it is a missing
field generally in Design Research, Design Practice and Design Education.
The focus of 'Epistemology of Design Knowledge and Theory' is to look at
the epistemological characteristics of knowledge and theory relating to
design and by making theory using these epistemological characteristics,
improve design practice, theory and research.
A practical example is to look at the epistemological characteristics of
(say) a group of design problems. The approach contrasts with the
traditional design research and design practice approaches in which the
focus is primarily on the concrete aspects of content and contexts of design
situations .
Say for example, the focus was 'Design problems associated with people's
interpretation of medicine bottle labels'. A typical design / design
research approach would be to look at the characteristics of the labels
(fonts, layout, colour, etc) and to look at the context (how they are used,
the users, user behaviour, success in interpreting the labels, etc). More
advanced approaches might include (say) theories about cognition, social
construction of knowledge, affordances etc.
An approach from the field of 'Epistemology of Design Knowledge and Theory'
, however, would be to stand back one or more levels of abstraction and
look at the characteristics of the theories we use and make about this
situation. The focus would be on the epistemological characteristics of
theory and practice of interaction in this situation and creating coherent
models about the structural relationships of these theories into a situation
'type'. This would be an epistemologically-based model of the theory
structure of the situation.
The approach is important because it is epistemological similarity that
allows us to justifiably transfer knowledge from domain to domain, design
situation to design situation, and to avoid design research and design
practice being blinkered by being context and content specific.
What?! Why?! I can almost hear people ask.
Looking at the epistemology of the knowledge and theory of design
situations is useful on at least six counts:
1. Because the behaviours of any design situation are more transparent (if
you have the ways of looking) in ways that are much more powerful than the
more blinkered approach of focusing only on the concrete issues of design
content and context.
2. Understanding the behaviours of design situations in this way is much
more powerful than traditional approaches based on design principles,
elements , context and user characteristics.
3. It is easy to draw on knowledge and findings about epistemologically
similar design situations in completely different fields in which the design
situations and contexts are not similar in the concrete.
4. It can become almost trivially easy to identify types of design solutions
likely to be successful to many complicated design problems that would
commonly be called 'wicked problems'.
5. It points to approaches that will improve on existing research approaches
and design practice.
6. It provides a sound basis for optimising design solutions and design
research approaches.
Best wishes,
Terry
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM
School of Design and Art
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Group
Researcher, Digital Ecosystems and Business Intelligence Institute
Associate, Planning and Transport Research Centre
Curtin University, PO Box U1987, Perth, Western Australia 6845
Mob: 0434 975 848, Fax +61(0)8 9305 7629, [log in to unmask]
Visiting Professor, Member of Scientific Council
UNIDCOM/ IADE, Lisbon, Portugal
Honorary Fellow, Institute of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development
Management School, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
____________________
-----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 David
Sless
Sent: Friday, 23 April 2010 1:25 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Limits of prediction (was Re: Are visual approaches to design
outdated?)
Hi Terry,
You say:
> You are right that there is a shift in this case, Most of the analyses I
do
> are of theory qua theory and hence a lot of it requires a high level
view.
> Looking at evidence of the limits to competence of us as individual
humans
> is different.
Are we not human beings when we do theory qua theory?
As theorists, are we not subject to the same limitations of competence?
Or, is there a special dispensation for theorists?
It strikes me that theory, anyway, is at its best when it is based on a
collection of individual cases.
When it comes to predicting outcome, there are a few things that are worth
teasing out. On the one hand there are things which are difficult to predict
simply because we don't know all the factors that contribute to the outcome.
In this case understanding multiple feedback loops may be important.
More interesting are those phenomena which are non-predictable because it's
impossible to determine the outcomes from the starting conditions, and no
amount of feedback loops will help us. There are lots of physical and social
phenomena of that kind. A lot of design fits into this type of phenomenon.
The best we can hope for is that we try out a prototype on a small scale,
and discover the unintended consequences, before we inflict them on an
unsuspecting world.
As to the limited forms of prediction open to us in areas like my own, the
most we can really say with any confidence about the way people will
interact with our designs is based on the testing we do on prototypes before
implementation. There is no massive body of theory behind such prediction
but rather a simple assumption that if people can use a design in a
particular way during testing, they are likely to be able to use the design
in this way in the world. Or, put simply, if people can do something today,
they are likely to be able to do it again tomorrow. Equally, if they cannot
do it today, they are unlikely to be able to do it tomorrow: it's called
suck-it-and-see. Not much of a theory I admit, indeed not really a theory at
all, but about the best we have.
If there is any theory it is the processes we use and the way we describe
them based on multiple individual cases. But even there, all we are really
saying is that using this process worked in the past, so lets use it again.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/dsblog
web: http://www.communication.org.au
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