Friends,
Permit me to offer a brief footnote to my earlier note.
While the category of "research by design" remains problematic, there is a large and growing body of evidence for the value of design activity within a larger analytical research frame.
Chris Rust, Judith Mottram, Kristina Niedderer, Owain Pedgley, Pelle Ehn, Erik Stolterman, and many others have undertaken this kind of work successfully. The challenge is that this kind of research often requires more intellectual sophistication and conceptual skill than classical analytic or descriptive research in engineering or the social sciences. One must be able to understand, address, analyze, and interpret processes. Responsible process descriptions are notoriously difficult.
It's rather like doing self-analysis -- it can be done, but doing it well requires a Karen Horney or a Soren Kierkegaard. This kind of work is not for beginners or for researchers who have not yet mastered the craft of research, and self-analysis is certainly not for doctoral students.
Fortunately, design practice within a larger research frame does work for doctoral students with advanced research skills, intellectual rigor, the ability to write, and good supervision. Mark Evans's project involves finding examples of that kind of work.
It should be said that this is design practice within a larger research frame and not "research by design" as many have made it out to be. To do this work, one must practice design, AND one must articulate the metanarrative that constitutes research act within which the design process takes place.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
email: [log in to unmask]
URL: www.swinburne.edu.au/design
Phone Dean's Office +61 3 9214 6078
Phone Faculty Switchboard +61 3 9214 6755
|