Hello,
Recent emails from Klaus and David illustrate perhaps the greatest roadblock
in developing design theory and design research and improving the field.
This is the issue of what or who is the point of reference for design
research and design theory.
The tension is between those who regard designers (and current design
practices) as the point of reference and those who do not.
I suggest the benefits in improving design activity come from carefully
avoiding using designers and current design practices as the authority and
reference point for whether theories are correct and design research is
appropriate.
Design activity is in an underdeveloped state and continues to result in
many serious problems for individuals and societies some of which have been
and are ethically heinous. It is easy to make a list: anti-smoking
advertisements that encourage people to smoke, technologies that result in
climate failures, cars that damage many more people than necessary,
inequalities in and across nations due to the approach to promotion of
consumption, failure of the food programs in Africa, failures of education
systems, health system design failures leading to unusually high levels of
idiopathic disease, urban design failures that force high vehicle use and
poor quality of life, graphic design failures that poorly represent
companies.. .
Design research and theory is at such as a low level that we are forced into
naively describing many of these issues in 'magic' or cargo-cult terms such
as 'design talent', 'wicked problems', 'unpredictable' and 'creative
solutions'. Using such terms, implies our standards of thinking about
design are too low.
With hindsight, it is possible to see the causes of design failures and why
particular designs did well.
Anytime it is possible to see causes with hindsight then it is possible to
use research to develop better theory, design guidelines and new forms of
design education. This means the same kinds of failures do not happen and
that we can produce better designs without resorting to guesswork.
Using designers and current design practices as the reference point and
authority for undertaking design research and building theory locks the
design research field into low performance and more decades of the same
theoretical mess. Worse, it imposes this lack of competence on everyone else
in the world.
Instead, it is possible to use research that focuses on understanding why
and how social and technical factors result in particular design outcome
behaviours.
To date we have been setting our standards of thinking about design and
design research so low we trip up over them.
It is possible to do better. Ethically, I suggest it is important.
Terence
____________________
Dr. Terence Love, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Director Design-focused Research Group, Design Out Crime Research Centre
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]
Member of International 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 Klaus
Krippendorff
Sent: Sunday, 22 August 2010 3:39 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Where do we want to go?
david,
just to say that i quite agree with you.
my experiences in actual design inquiries, preparing and testing of a
design, do not require the kind of abstractions we have been discussing.
i responded in opposition to claims that are so far removed from what
designers do, in effect trying to jump on the bandwagon of scientific
research, without a deeper understanding of what scientists have to do when
they engage in it, to the detriment of supporting what really matters in
design.
you may recall, that, in chapter 7 of my semantic turn, i outline a science
for design with practical methods and ways one could substantiate the kind
of claims that designers typically make, ending with validity criteria that
deviate from scientific research yet could acquire the same rhetorical
force.
klaus
-----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, August 20, 2010 12:40 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Where do we want to go?
Hi All,
Unlike Klaus and Terry, I have no stomach for the spirals of abstraction
that sometimes permeate the discussion on this list. Nor do I have a head
for the heights of grand theory and generalisations. If I had not become a
researcher and designer, I would have probably been a carpenter. I suspect
my way of thinking owes more to my love of carpentry than to my love of the
academy.
Anyway, I make these personal observations to suggest to the phd students on
this list that there are other ways to contribute to knowledge in our field
(the point of doing a phd) than to engage in gladiatorial combat on the high
twisting wire of abstraction and grand theory. It is possible to proceed
from the ground up, as it were, building a stable platform bit by bit.
With that in mind, and to augment what Keith has just said, I'd like to
suggest the question of 'where do we want to go?' takes on an altogether
more pragmatic tone, yet remains poetic. In our own case, as information
designers, we try to begin answering the question 'where do we want to go'
in the scoping stage of our work. This is the 'fuzzy front end' of the
design process.
Sometimes this question can be answered by taking account of everything we
can find out that is relevant to where we are now and how we got there, then
working out from that where we want to get to. If this is called 'history',
then I am very much in favour of history. Indeed, to proceed without that
knowledge is simply irresponsible, disrespectful, and probably
unsustainable.
At other times, this question becomes problematic in itself. An old joke
captures the sense of it. A tourist in Ireland who is lost approaches a
local (has to be an Irishman) and asks him "how do I get from here to
Dublin"? The Irishman pauses to think and then says. "Well, if were you, I
wouldn't start from here". This is a simple and profound answer, and far
from making the Irishman appear simple minded, as a first hearing of the
joke suggests, it suggests that the Irishman has a profound understanding of
what we sometimes incorrectly call 'wicked problems'. When this happens, in
one of those delicious moments of epiphany and revelation, in which I am
suffused with the wonderment of design.
A simple example. We often get commissioned to redesign instructions for
people to use when taking medicines. Sometimes we find that the instructions
require us to tell people to do things that seem odd-like asking frail
bed-ridden old ladies to walk up and down after taking the medicine. On
investigation of this case, we discovered that the reason for this odd
instruction was because the medicine was coated in a substance that can burn
the lining of your oesophagus, if it lodges there for any length of time.
The solution was not to redesign the instructions but to redesign the
medicine.
This is a simple example of the type that many designers would recognise in
different fields-thinking outside the box, as it were. What is interesting,
as a research topic, is how we get from redesigning instructions to
redesigning medicine. Also, I would note that the shift in thinking was not
the result of a creative moment inside someones head, but rather the result
of a systematic engagement with the world. It is the quality and breadth of
that engagement that deserves research attention. For example, we could have
defined the problem boundary around the instructions only. Indeed, the
client expected us to do just that, but we chose to push the problem
boundary out further. We could, of course, have pushed the boundary out
further still to look at the social and economic circumstances that gave
rise to the condition that the medicine was treating, or the genetic
predisposition to the condition, etc, etc.
There are other 'creative', 'inventive', 'discovery' moments in our
projects, most notably at the benchmarking and testing stages when we invite
people to use designs, listen to what they say, ask them questions, and
observe what they do. This is sometimes called usability testing, but that
is misleading and a form of pretend science. Some of our most intense
moments of discovery occur in our work at this point. Once again, these
moments are not the result of a creative process inside someones head, but
rather the result of a systematic engagement with the world, with an
openness and preparedness to be surprised.
To those of you with the normal cliched view of science, and the idea that
testing and creativity are anthema, you might want to look at our experience
and think again. Also, bear in mind that we do this type of 'testing'
precisely because we accept that we are dealing with non-predictable
phenomena. So at the very moment we seem to be at our most 'scientific' we
are also at our 'creative' best.
I would not want to overgeneralise our experiences and suggest they are
relevant to all other areas of design, but they might be worth thinking
about.
At a simple level I believe that the question of 'where do we want to go'
has to begin with the question of 'where we are now and how did we get
there', even if we discover in asking that question that we are starting
from the wrong place. Moreover, once we work out the right starting place, I
believe that we need the before and after data to persuade someone that we
have done something useful. To behave otherwise is to be irresponsible and
we should not be surprised if the outcomes are unworkable and unsustainable.
And that is a generalisation that might be relevant to all areas of design.
David
--
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web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
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