Dear Don,
Your post a few weeks back and the following commentary gave me a few ideas. I’m not sure if this is a critique, but I hope it is useful.
The “observe-make-test” schema seems good to me. But I’d suggest calling it OMT (pronounced “oh-em-tee”) rather than TOM. OMT is easy to pronounce, and it keeps the steps in the order.
To ask how design can be the subject of inquiry requires us to identify features of the design process.
Fuller (1969: 319) describes the process in a model of what he describes as “the design science event flow.” Fuller divides the process into two steps. The first is a subjective process of search and research. The second is a generalizable process that moves from prototype to practice.
The subjective process of search and research, Fuller outlines a series of steps:
teleology -- > intuition -- > conception -- >
apprehension -- > comprehension -- >
experiment -- > feedback -- >
Under generalization and objective development leading to practice, he lists:
prototyping #1 -- > prototyping #2 -- > prototyping #3 -- >
production design -- > production modification -- > tooling -- >
production -- > distribution -- >
installation -- > maintenance -- > service -- >
reinstallation -- > replacement -- >
removal -- > scrapping -- > recirculation
For Fuller, the design process is a comprehensive sequence leading from teleology – preferred future states to practice and finally to regeneration. This last step, regeneration, creates a new stock of material on which the designer may again act. The specific terms may change for process design or services design. The essential concept remains the same.
Understanding design process and design outcomes requires both qualitative and quantitative information. The issue at each point is what we want to know.
It is not entirely correct to label quantitative research alone as analytical. Both quantitative and qualitative information are subject to analysis.
For reasons that are not relevant here, I have been re-reading Patrick Collinson’s excellent little book titled The Reformation. Collinson’s analyses are nearly all qualitative. Collinson brings an historical moment to life, analyzing and considering the times as they were and how they might have seemed, and felt, to those who lived them. In this way, he helps us to understand today how a moment in history gave birth to the world in which we live.
In a significant but very different way, researchers such as Thomas Piketty, or Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff use numbers to analyze how past and recent financial data give rise to the financial challenges of today’s world.
One method of analysis uses qualitative, descriptive historical data, the other method of analysis uses quantitative data, past and present.
This sounds flatter and less interesting than all the ideas I’ve had while strolling about and thinking, but I should get this of my desktop before the thread is relegated to the far distant past.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015
University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
--
Reference
Fuller, Buckminster. 1969. Utopia or Oblivion. The Prospects for Humanity. New York: Bantam Books.
--
Don Norman wrote:
—snip—
In the form of Human-Centered Design that i practice and preach, which I now call Observe, Make, Test (TOM -- letters restructured to make it pronounceable):
- Observations are qualitative
- Making can be sketching, drawing, prototyping – think of this as instantiation
- Testing transforms the qualitative Observations into quantitative information, via the Made material
This argument requires considerable elaboration, but I wondered if this gorup can provide constructive critique of the notion.
—snip—
and
—snip—
I guess Roger Martin was correct to call it analytical.
Quantitative methods use formal, rigorous analyses, such as logic, algebra, and various forms of mathematics to collect, analyze, and describe the phenomena under study.
—snip—
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|