Hello Don,
I'm wondering if you would elaborate on something.
Do you believe that design research should inform practice?
Put another way, should design research be useful knowledge for design
practitioners?
For what it is worth, I myself am torn on the answer to this question. I'd
be most interested in hearing your thoughts. It seems that you are implying
that design research be useful knowledge for design practitioners, but I
don't want to misread you, if that is not the case.
If innovation is one possible goal of design research, then perhaps not only
does design research need to ignore users, it also needs to ignore
designers?
Regards,
Carl
On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 6:45 PM, Don Norman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Changing the email subject line because Google mail lumps all email with
> the
> same subject line together, making it really difficult when there are 70
> messages in the thread. So every so often it is useful to change the
> subject line.
>
> I really think that there is a research-practice gap here. Most designers
> are practitioners. The PhD is a research degree. Practitioners often have
> no
> research tradition. Much of this debate is useful and interesting, but
> also revealing of the great gap between what some of us think is research
> and useful knowledge and what others think.
>
> This is not just the practitioner-researcher gap. It is also the gap
> between
> the scientifically trained researcher and the ones trained in the
> art/architectural community, where much of the research is history and
> criticism. (I am not trying to say that one form is better than the other:
> I
> am pointing out that they have very different goals, aims, and methods.)
>
> see my two papers:
> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/the_research-practice_gap_1.html
>
> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/talk_research_practice_gap_2_kinds_of_innovation_1.html
>
> (Personally, if there is no generalizable knowledge from design, then
> design
> is an art and belongs in the craft schools. Also personally, that notion is
> silly. )
>
> --
>
> I am amused by Francesa's comment: "you might be interested in considering
> the position of those who say that in order to design successful products
> one should "forget user-centered design"!
> The main book is "Design-Driven Innovation" by Roberto Verganti."
>
> Roberto and I are so much on the same wavelength here that we are jointly
> giving a keynote at the "Designing Pleasurable products"confence in two
> weeks in Milan.
> http://www.dppi11.polimi.it/
>
>
> Basically, we say that UCD and HCD (which we consider to be the same
> things)
> are great for incremental innovation but useless for radical innovation
> (what Roberto calls "meaning change"). We use Pasteur's quadrant to argue
> that there are four kinds of innovation. And the most dramatic come from
> anywhere, certainly NOT from user studies.
>
> I gave my version at IASDR and at an IIT-ID conference. The Design Research
> community hates it. Technology first, i argue. needs last. See
>
> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/technology_first_needs_last.html
> You might look at my paper entitled "Human-Centered Design Considered
> harmful" as well as the second URL I posted above.
> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/human-centered_design_considered_harmful.html
> http://jnd.org/dn.mss/hcd_harmful_a_clarification.html
>
> --
>
> Have fun people.
>
> Don
>
>
> Don Norman
> *Nielsen Norman Group
> *[log in to unmask] www.jnd.org
> http://www.core77.com/blog/columns/
> Latest book: "Living with Complexity <http://www.jnd.org/books.html#608>"
> KAIST (Daejeon, S. Korea). IDEO Fellow.
>
>
> On Fri, Jun 10, 2011 at 2:45 AM, Francesa Zampollo <[log in to unmask]
> >wrote:
>
> > Dear Stefanie,
> > you might be interested in considering the position of those who say that
> > in order to design successful products one should "forget user-centered
> > design"!
> > The main book is "Design-Driven Innovation" by Roberto Verganti.
> >
> > You might also find interesting Sander's notion of Postdesign.
> >
> > good luck with your research!
> > (from a fellow struggler phd student...)
> >
> > Kind regards
> > Francesca
> >
>
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