Dear Klaus:
I was with you 100% on your description of research until the following:
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clearly, what i have described as scientific research aims at explanations, not innovation, at describing what is, not what could be. it is based on data that a researcher needs to generate, find, or be given. data are not about the future that designers are interested in but about what has happened. this is not to say that researchers look only backward. they generalize what was found in the data. but generalizing what happened in the past renders designers the servants of what happened in the past, unable to do their job of intervening in undesirable conditions to generate new and better measures.
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Are you suggesting all science research is driven only to describe what is? Would you be willing to consider scientific research as a design activity seeking to create innovative interventions for human problems? If so, what's the big difference between scientific and design research?
Mike
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