Dear Jude,
With interest, I've been following the earlier thread on
generalizability and your new post on design theory. Some of these
questions lie at the core of philosophy of science. These become
especially pointed with respect to the theoretical foundations of a
professional practice such as design. This would also apply to the other
practices that meet Herbert Simon's definition of a design science --
management, law, and medicine.
The challenge is that these practices address specific problems. In
this respect, all knowledge that we draw must in some way be inductive.
Yet within each of these specific problems, there must reside some core
problems or issues that link them to related problems in the same
professional practice. Were this not so, then there would be no reason
to identify one profession as "design" and another as "medicine" or
"law." These commonalities must in some way be generalizable. Despite
this, the problems cannot be as generic as physical or chemical problems
-- if they were, we would be able to manage all professional practices
on a firm basis of deductive principles, something that the
individuality of any problem renders impossible. This fact would also
follow from the case that all professional practices serve human beings,
each being unique in the nature of the services that he or she requires
of a professional. And yet we all know that we go to a physician for an
injury to the body or an accountant to work with taxes.
There is a shifting border between the kinds of information, knowledge,
and understanding we accrue and can apply to design practice. Thus the
debate, say, on wicked problems and where the wickedness or trickiness
of such problems may lie.
Some problems that once seemed wicked are in realty large-scale
problems that yield to increasingly more powerful methods of research
and development. Manned flight was such a problem in 1890. It was
partially solved by 1903. It is no problem at all today. Flying to the
moon was such a problem in 1960. We solved it by the late 1960s, but it
may be a wicked problem again in 2011 for political and economic reasons
leading to lost skills and knowledge.
In contrast, small-scale "toy" problems may remain wicked in Rittel's
definition. A case in point would be a situation in which three friends
meet to go to a movie, and each insists on a different genre. If none
will change preference and neither will yield to another, the problem
remains wicked and unsolvable.
While I am still wrestling with a broad-based approach to the
foundations of theory construction in design, I did publish an article
in 2003 that offers a first outline and a series of citations to useful
literature:
Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Theory construction in design research:
criteria: approaches, and methods.” Design Studies, 24 (2003),
507–522.
If you search my name and the title “Theory construction in design
research" in Google Scholar, there seem to be some copies floating
around the web.
Just as there are no purely inductive methods that work, and no purely
deductive methods, there can't be any purely subjective or objective
approaches to design research that work well. I'd argue, of course, that
there are no completely subjective or objective research methods in any
art or science, not even in those that become genuinely quantified and
deductive such as logic or mathematics. Even in logic, mathematics, and
physics, leaps of intuition and new insights play a role in developing
the concepts that are later subjected to tests or proofs that render
them "objective" after the work of testing or proving is done.
Best regards,
Ken
Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Dean, Faculty of Design |
Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia |
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www.swinburne.edu.au/design
Conference Co-Chair: Doctoral Education in Design - Practice,
Knowledge, Vision | Hong Kong Polytechnic University | May 22-25, 2011 |
www.sd.polyu.edu.hk/DocEduDesign2011
Fluxus and the Essential Questions of Life | University of Chicago
Press |
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