Dear Chuck,
The time has come for me to withdraw from this conversation. We’ve shifted from focusing on a task – including potential problems – to judging motives and nominating white hats and black hats.
You write, “I’m beginning to wonder if Terry is the only one on the list with a positive, entrepreneurial attitude to the problem of developing a portal for the field around design related bibliographies . . .
“For example, Ken has spent a lot of time saying what he doesn’t believe can be done (even as he begins to do and test what he sees opportunistically as doable.) His misconstructions of what I suggest are so frequent and negative that it is tiring. Ideas I didn’t propose, like annotated bibliographies and peer-reviewed bibliographies, became ways to beat down what was actually proposed. (Ken also introduced the word ‘thematic’ where I would use the word ‘contextualized’.)”
If you want research tools, I know something about them. I don’t mean technological solutions. There are probably two hundred or three hundred people on the list who can program a technical solution once the tool is defined as a system. There are more like six to ten list subscribers who have professional experience designing content and process for reference tools. I am one of those, and the only one who has been willing to engage with the conversation.
Part of an engaged conversation involves using experience and heuristics to examine what we can and can’t design. If I were to design an automobile instrument panel starting with a solution that moves in the wrong direction, an expert such as yourself would use your experience to explain why the direction is problematic. If I were a student, and you wanted me to make mistakes from which I could learn, perhaps you wouldn’t explain. I’m taking it for granted that you want a tool that works for the field rather than lots of failures from which you can learn. So drawing on forty years of experience since my first major reference book, I have been offering explanations. To the degree that some of these proposals seem to move in the wrong direction, my tone may seem negative. As I wrote earlier, perhaps forty years of hands-on experience developing reference tools makes me blind to new and brilliant solutions.
It could also be that folks on the list don’t know what they don’t know about these kinds of projects, while they think they know things they don’t actually know. For the full argument, read Don Norman’s Core77 blog on “Why Design Education Must Change.” This section is titled “When Designers Think They Know, But Don’t.” It’s not about design education; it’s about designers and design professors.
Throughout the thread, I’ve tried to shed light on the issues and challenges involved in shaping such a tool. I’ve tried to explain the differences among kinds of bibliographic tools that are apparently not clear to everyone on the list – these include book lists, reference lists, thematic bibliographies, and annotated bibliographies of several kinds. Even though you did not discuss annotated bibliographies at all points, you did discuss them. And while you prefer the term “contextualized” to the terms “thematic” or “topical,” it is hard to see how to develop a truly contextualized bibliography unless it is thematic ortopical.
As for negativity and opportunism, there is a straightforward answer. If someone on the list can come up with $300,000, I can develop the tool, populate it with information, and have it fully functional and accessible in around a year. This would not solve the maintenance problem or the problem of updating and populating the database after the launch. That’s likely to cost another $60,000 a year. I’m not talking about hiring me – I’m talking about the services I’d have to buy in after developing the concept and designing the system. Perhaps it could be done for less, perhaps it would cost more. The principle is clear. Since no one seems to have $300,000 for such a venture, and nearly no one on the PhD-Design list knows how to develop such tools or maintain them, the reasonable way forward is opportunistic.
Few of the subscribers to this list will remember ARIAD. ARIAD was the Allison Research Index of Art and Design. It was a project somewhat like what’s being proposed here. It was different in some dimensions, but the goals were similar – providing a widely accessible database of completed research projects in art and design available on the net. ARIAD was conceived and developed by BrianAllison, a professor at De Montfort University with funding from various UKfunding agencies. It was a nice try. Even so, it was partially obsolete before it launched, and no one made serious use of it, even when it was new. Part of the problem was lack of experience. Part was a failure to know or properly to use existing tools. Part was the fact that there was no robust mechanism for updating and repopulating the database without additional external funding.
Government agencies funded such attempts during the fat years of research funding. Those years are gone. What we cannot build for ourselves will not get funded. If venture capitalists and investors see a way to monetize such a project and cash out as they do with web ventures, investors might take this up. I have a hard time seeing how to monetize it.
If we could get the tool up and running on an open access basis with reasonable likelihood of maintenance, though, no one would care whether it was fully funded or completed using opportunistic resources.
I’ve invented and developed reference tools and other kinds of information-based publications for nearly four decades. Perhaps I am more of an entrepreneur than you think. If I had explained all the back-of-the envelope calculations and assumptions that lie behind my occasional negative heuristics, you could accuse me of being negative and discouraging. As it is, I’ve tried to be reasonable and reflective with the goal being a project that is likely to be 1) completed, 2) relevant, 3) available, and 4) freely accessible.
If you genuinely believe that I am trying to “beat down what was actually proposed,” it does not make sense for me to remain involved in this thread. My view is based on experience. I have the heuristics to apply design thinking to a problem similar to problems I have solved in the past, generally for companies with large amounts of money. It takes rigorous thinking to solve a problem like this for free, especially if the tool is to be used and useful. It’s easy to develop optimistic but unworkable solutions like ARIAD, the quiescent Mendeley bibliographies, and other projects to date.
I disagree with the notion that designers can use design thinking to solve this problem when they 1) don’t know what they don’t know about reference tools, and when they 2) think they know things they don’t really know.
To me, this seems like the Field of Dreams strategy. “If you build it, he will come.” Terrific movie. I loved Burt Lancaster as “Moonlight” Graham. But I don’t think the Field of Dreams strategy will build a research tool. My idea for a conversation leading toward such a research tool is the serious kind of conversation required for a real project, including a focus on overcoming problems with occasional critical thinking for problematic directions. Without that, there’s no need for my experience and skills. I wish you the best with a different approach. If you build it, I will come.
For now, I’ll put on my black hat and ride off into the sunset. I quote the closing words of Everett Hitch in Appaloosa:
“As for the unforeseeable...
... well, it was out there waiting for me.
I headed straight into the setting sun
and rode west at an easy pace.
It was gonna be a long ride...
... and there was no reason to hurry.”
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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