Dear Martin,
 
In my view, one should not find oneself bemused that researchers use words to understand the words they use. One of the key challenges in research is to understand what we are saying to one another. This requires developing and calibrating a shared vocabulary. Those who do research in mathematics, law, and medicine did this long ago. Those who do research in design have not. Thus we still have problems and debates on words and what they mean as well as on substantive issues in our field.
 
Klaus wrote, “if someone claims to have mastered ‘design thinking’ I would say: ok, show me.” In my view, Klaus’s contributions to the thread describe the ability to execute a design process rather than simply to demonstrate design outcomes.
 
You wrote, “This explains nicely why the kind of knowing that comes from practice-led research is so important and how it can sometimes only be fully articulated by outcomes that are not in the form of words.”

In my view, this does not explain how others take what we know on board to use it in their own work. You are describing both individual learning and research, but we share these in different ways. We partly learn by doing. We only transfer what we KNOW from one mind to another through the medium of words. We may demonstrate what we know and coach others in developing their own practical skills, but these practical skills are in part different from the forms of general knowledge that arise from research — and even from the forms of particular, experiential knowledge that involve research as distinct from practice alone.
 
Research involves 1) explaining our research problem, 2) describing our process, and 3) explaining our results so that others can 1) develop the research problem, 2) the research method, or 3) the research outcome.
 
When we engage in research, we are obliged to do it in such a way that others can understand what we have done, understand our results, take our results on board for their own use, adapt them, or apply any of these to their own problems.
 
Demonstrating outcomes does not describe or demonstrate the process by which we achieve those outcomes.
 
Every research narrative has at least two levels of narration. One involves the object of inquiry that forms the content of the research. The other involves inquiry into the process of research itself. This is a metanarrative.
 
The research metanarrative involves narrating research process issues that lie outside the inquiry itself. This includes
 
1. Stating the research problem,
 
2. Discussing the knowledge in the field to date,
 
3. Discussing past attempts to examine or solve the problem,
 
4. Discussing methods and approach,
 
5. Comparing possible alternative methods,
 
6. Discussing problems encountered in the research, and
 
7. Explaining how the researcher addresses those problems.
 
The research narrative involves the issues that
 
8. Explicitly contribute to the body of knowledge within the field.
 
This is where researchers demonstrate and exhibit aspects of the process under study.
 
A full expansion of this narrative and a description of the forms it can take requires deeper and more careful explanation.
 
The specific internal aspects of any givewn research inquiry are found here. This is where we put forward evidence, cases, illustrations, examples, process demonstrations, and artifacts. That is, this is where we demonstrate research outcomes.
 
After explaining and demonstrating the substantive portion of the research inquiry and stating results in the research narrative, we return to the metanarrative:
 
8) to state implications for future research.
 
The research narrative describes and portrays activities, processes, and objects in the external world. This is why different forms of communication can reveal and explain the research inquiry. In some cases, these explanations and demonstrations are better than words or numbers.
 
In contrast, the research metanarrative is a thinking process that takes place in the mind of the researcher. Since we cannot see what takes place in the researcher’s mind, the researcher must explain and articulate the metanarrative in words. As a result, words, what words mean, and our common understanding of shared words become important to the research act.
 
The literature of a field reveals some aspects of the metanarrative. In some cases, the metanarrative occurs in the minds of many researchers, and the author of a research report describes and reports these as well.
 
The research metanarrative involves both individual thought and social communication. Even though we do not think exclusively in words, we describe our thoughts in words and symbols. Some metanarrative issues allow us to use pictorial or numerical models. The metanarrative as a whole requires description. Descriptive narration generally requires words.
 
The problem we often face in practice-led research is that no artifact is constitutes a full research outcome. While an artefact may be part of the outcome, no artifact can narrate the research metanarrative. The research metanarrtive describes the research activities that take place in the researcher’s mind and it describes the activities that take place during the research process.
 
Some forms of research involve more than two levels of narration. Some forms of research involve the narrative of research content, the metanarrative of the research process, and a second level of reflective metanarrative on the researcher’s engagement with the research process.
 
Still further levels of metanarrative may be possible.
 
Without arguing that all these words should interest everyone, I do argue that they are a legitimate set of concerns for a research list.
 
You are right that designers should be able to demonstrate what one, and you are right that showing that one can do something is a way of demonstrating skill.
 
Examining the outcomes of professional activity is the way in which guilds enroll and promote guild members through the ranks from apprentice to journeyman to master.
 
Medicine, much like the design fields, was once entirely a guild and remains a guild for medical practitioners.
 
Practicing professional medicine requires guild mastery. Medical students study medicine as apprentices. The residence and specialization period moves them from apprenticeship to journeyman status. Finally, the examination boards and others determine whether a physician deserves advanced journeyman or master status. This involves developing the skills, capacity, and qualifications of individual physicians.
 
In contrast, medical research develops the entire field of medicine.
 
Researchers explain the research problems they examine. They describe the research process. Then, they explain and narrate their results, stating both the narrative and metanarrative.
 
As a result, others in the field can further develop either 1) the research problem, 2) the research method, or 3) the research outcome.
 
Medical journals help physicians to understand the how and why of medical procedures, and physicians can study and make use of procedures by reading the words and explanations of their colleagues.
 
Simply seeing the results of a successful procedure are not at all the same.
 
So it is in design. An artifact may demonstrate that a designer is a skilled designer. It may show that he or she knows how to solve a design problem. But it does not articulate the results so that other designers can take the results on board, apply them in their own work, and build on them.
 
One of the frequent claims of practice-led research is that some knowledge involves “knowing that,” while practice-led research involves “knowing how.”
 
This is not quite right. Much practice-led research demonstrates only THAT someone knows how.
 
The research metanarrative and the research narrative together help us to learn how for ourselves so that we may practice better.
 
A concern for narrative and metanarrative requires a concern for words.
 
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 
 
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia ||| Visiting Professor | UTS Business School | University of Technology Sydney University | Sydney, Australia
 
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn 
 
Telephone: International +46 727 003 218 — In Sweden (0) 727 003 218
 
 
--
  
Martin Salisbury wrote:
 
—snip—
 
I have followed this thread, and its various incarnations, with interest, or rather bemusement. I have found it difficult to understand how so many words can be devoted to discussing the meaning (or absence of meaning) of words. And then of course, the inevitable competing claims for ownership of those words. At last, a few words from Klaus Krippendorff has made sense of it for me-
 
“if someone claims to have mastered “design thinking” I would say: ok, show me.”
 
This explains nicely why the kind of knowing that comes from practice-led research is so important and how it can sometimes only be fully articulated by outcomes that are not in the form of words.
 
—snip—
 
 

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