Dear Kari
In your last post you wrote:
"As rhetorically engaging the phrase 'research through design' may be, it
is misleading by conflating the two issues. There is the intellectual and
practical design work to create a novel artifact, and there is the
intellectual and practical research work to utilize the creation and use
process of that artifact to extract and conceptualize data, to interpret
and analyze it and to communicate the results."
I guess I understand quite well what you mean by the first "thread" of your
statement above, that "There is the intellectual and practical design work
to create a novel artifact". If I recall well, we have already discussed
this issue on this same list and, I think, we have come to the conclusion
that this intellectual activity you are referring to for technical purpose
of "creating" artifacts, such an activity would rather be called
'information search or gathering'.
As regards the second "thread" of your statement, that "there is the
intellectual and practical research work to utilize the creation and use
process of that artifact to extract and conceptualize data, to interpret
and analyze it and to communicate the results", first, for clarity
purpose, I would definitely drop the portion of your sentence saying that
research would be used to "to utilize the creation and use process of that
artifact". To me the particular meaning of this portion is not clear. I
would rather go straight and say: "there is the intellectual and practical
research work to extract and conceptualize data, to interpret and analyze
it and to communicate the results". Then, this would constitute, on its
own rights, another kind of intellectual endeavour focusing exclusively on
artifacts, generating new knowledge on their ontology and their use. And
precisely, it is some of the results of this activity that may feed the
other group of individuals 'searching' - and not 'researching - for
information on how to practically conceive and produce artifacts.
Perhaps this additional conceptual distinction could help dissipating the
confusion in our minds, in our "languaging", and in our practice.
Francois
Montreal
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