Hi, Ken,

Seems to me that 'Developing a profound understanding of how design works'
seems to me to be a part of the first item in my email to Emma- 

'1. Design research defined as 'research that helps improve design outcomes
and design practices'.  Developing a profound understanding of how design
works' is research and its role is  to ' help improve design outcomes and
design practices'.

I suggest Design as an activity is 'essentially' the same in epistemological
terms as other activities.  It seems better not to attempt to reify it into
something special. After looking at it for a few decades,  there doesn't
seem to me to be anything particularly unique that marks out the activity of
designing  as epistemologically different from other activities. It involves
people using mental, emotional and physical skills in  routine and
non-routine situations to produce an output.

As you know, I've moved away from Simon's definition back to a simpler
definition of the activity of design as ' to  create  designs' in which a
'design'  has its everyday  meaning as ' a specification to make or do
something'.  From all the dimensions of analysis I've come across,  this
latter definition is easier to use and more powerful and consistent that
Simon's  definition. It fits more closely  with the meaning of 'a design' as
used by the majority of designers in the world. Simon's definition differs
in an unhelpful way in that he suggests that the outcome is a 'course of
action' . In contrast, a very specific  difference is that a design for
(say) a hammer specifies all and everything about the hammer. 'How to
manufacture the hammer'  (the course of action) is deliberately not
specified because that enables those who would make it  the hammer to
explore as many different possibilities for manufacture  as they wish in
order to improve their profitability.  Simon appeared to overlook this
crucial point of  distinguishing between the specification of the 'what'
and the specification of  'how to create the what'  that applies even when
the 'what' is a process or activity, rather than a physical thing. It seems
to be the time to  go beyond Simon on this issue.

Or do you see things differently?

Warm regards,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
BA(Hons) PhD(UWA), PGCEd,
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks
Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask] 
--


-----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 Ken
Friedman
Sent: Friday, 10 August 2012 7:55 PM
To: Dr Terence Love
Subject: Re: Relationship Between Design Research & Practice

Dear Terry,

There is a third, and important, form of design research.

Herbert Simon defines the goal of science in general as understanding
"things: how they are and how they work" (Simon 1982: 129). Next, he defines
design. To design is to "[devise] courses of action aimed at changing
existing situations into preferred ones" (Simon 1982: 129).

A third form of design research involves developing a profound understanding
of how design works. Most significant developments in many fields involves a
serious and abstract understanding or a profound theoretical understanding
of the "thing" -- how it is and how it works. This ultimately leads to
progress in the two forms of design research you describe.

Yours,

Ken

Professor Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished
Professor | Dean, Faculty of Design | Swinburne University of Technology |
Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask] | Ph: +61
3 9214 6078 | Faculty www.swinburne.edu.au/design

--

Reference

Simon, Herbert. 1982. The sciences of the artificial. Cambridge, Mass:
MIT Press.

--

Terry Love wrote:

--snip--

A question that springs to mind is about where you are drawing the
boundaries of  what you see as design research.

Seems like there are two obvious-ish options:

1. Design research defined as 'research that helps improve design outcomes
and design practices'. This includes the design related research from AI,
Psychology, Math modelling etc  etc

2. Design research defined as 'research that designers use in their
practices'.

--snip--