Dear MP,
Thank you for your detailed reply. You raise some big issues in the content of what you say and in the huge experience you bring to the discussion. I'd like to reflect a little before I reply in detail.
Somehow on many of these issues, to move forward it is important for us to bring all the different and personally well-justified positions together into a whole that makes sense for all involved.
The best outcome in the short and medium term, and I'm guessing here at this point, will be to find a story or collection of stories that explain the situation from the different points of view, reinforce each other, and do not contradict.
The reality is that all of our personal experiences of designing and creative ideas are true for all of us because we are humans existing in the world and the world is the reality for us. In addition, well validated science also applies to the same situations and is another representation of the same reality; likewise informatic and other views on the same experiences. On one hand the realities align. On the other hand, the stories we have made to explain those realities currently appear to contradict.
This suggests it may be of benefit to map out all the different versions and explanations on evidence-based design to see the overlaps and contradictions. This could act as a reference for discussion to move the discipline and field forward on this issue. A big image in Robert Horn style might do that well (or something in cmap online).
Thank you for pointing me to your papers. I'll read them and think some more before replying in detail.
Best wishes,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
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
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of M P Ranjan
Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2014 5:54 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Cc: [log in to unmask]; M P Ranjan
Subject: Re: Evidence-Based Practice in a Changing World Economy
Dear Terry
Thank you for your note of appreciation and your three questions. While I do have a view on all three questions, I cannot claim to hold any definitive answers to these. However, I do have a model that I have been using to teach design students about the Design Journey where I use the metaphor of "Stone on the Pond" and the ripples that emerge from this immersion. My model of this journey is available for review and I have written about it earlier on this list. This model highlights the role of insights in shaping design directions while the design team is immersed in the task and usually meandering along in search of a firm direction, very iterative.
More recently I created another model to try and explain the mergence of ideas and more importantly the presence of blind spots that we all carry with us when it comes to our perception of reality as it exists in front of us and of our resources which could influence strongly the directions that we choose to explore. These blind spots are the result of our taboos, and all of us carry some of this baggage, especially if we are highly educated! Innocence may be a virtue here, in my interpretation. You will need to look at e diagram while reading the text that I am quoting below from a booklet on Design thinking that I prepared last year where my eight models are explained in a few pages each. I quote below the text of the Mind Body Map, which s a model that I created to explain the production of ideas. The model uses a flying carpet as my metaphor for the mind and the surface is dotted with stars that represent the various experiences and knowledge that we carry with us. The Body is strongly connected to these star events, each with its own sets of memories and sensory reflections. In this model we have three spaces, the experiential space, the taboo space and the propositional space.
I must warn you that no cognitive scientist has approved this text but if your knees are firm do play along with me and follow this text! This model can be ownloaded from my academia.edu site at the links below.
Mind Body Map
Set of eight models on design thinking as slides. That can be projected
https://www.academia.edu/3848991/Design_Thinking_Models_Primer_2013
Lectures on design thinking based on eight models as a pdf booklet where each of these models is explained
https://www.academia.edu/5266541/05_DesignThinking_Lectures_EarthWorkshop_LR_Mstr_2012
I quote from my lecture booklet
Mind Body Map (refer models at the links above) This model of Mind-Body map shows me that the resource maps that we are able to generate are inclusive only when we are able to transcend our taboos and discover resources that may otherwise be invisible to us when seen through the filters of our biases and socio-cultural taboos. Similarly imagined opportunities get processed through the design journey to bring back reformed design offerings that are synthesized and developed in such a way that they vibe with the context and add value to the social, geographic and historical situation that is being addressed.
Value emerges when the combination of possibilities are fine tuned to the ultimate particular offering where the variables are in fine balance and there is a display of great value and an unfolding of value that is not measured in small quantities but in huge steps and in some cases quite disproportionate to the inputs that have been deployed. Cost has no relation to price and material has no relation to value, if the experience is wonderful that user is charmed and the offering is of immense value. It is "My Grandfather’s chair!!" Therefore it is not necessary for a great design to be a novelty for it to generate value but its particular manifestation may have the ingredients of immense value and part of that value comes from the viewer and not necessarily from the object or service that is being offered, the context matters just as much. In this model I divide the mind space or canvas into three distinct zones, the Experential space, the Taboo space and the Propositional space.
The Experintial space has all the collection of past experiences and memories including sensations that are linked to particular memories as an embodied memory and these are very critical for design thinking. These could include surface qualities experienced by touch, taste or smell when a material is handled or strength that is experienced in our guts when we bend a piece of material in the hands while examining its suitability for a particular application while the design task progresses. Designers touch materials all the time and file away insights about many of its qualities and these come memories flooding back when called upon to make a decision about making new choices while the design thought is in progress. The Propositional space is where we file away tentative models and diagrams of patterns that could resolve or partly develop design ideas and these are works in progress and can have many internal ideas generated through the process of “inploration” that I have mentioned above. Conceptual blending is used to create many layers of alternatives and existing concepts are combined with new ones to make an array of alternatives from which informed choices are made. The Taboo space is also important and this is the blind spot of the designer and it influences the resource map since the taboos that the designer carries from childhood or from social and cultural practices may or may not permit them from even seeing available options since they may be a taboo subject in their culture or in their personal experience. Fear, beliefs and dogma all play a role and to overcome these is a huge effort especially if orthodox practices have been deeply ingrained in the designers mind.
The ‘flying magic carpet’ in the model can be seen as that of the mind being compared to an infinite canvas or supple fabric with each star or dot representing one or a collection of memories in chunks that can be brought together as Shibori or Bhandani workers bring together knots in their fabric to dye a particular colour in the process of pattern making on cloth using the tie- dye process of patterning. While the tye-dye process take time to tie and form patterns the mind takes no time at all, or almost no time and at a heightened state of creative excitement we can do millions of such comparisons in a very brief period of time. Yes, motivation is important and the spirit must contribute to experience and skill. Responsible design is another factor that plays an important role in value formation but that may be the subject of another post. The body and mind are intricately connected and these provide us the embodied experiences that are critical for effective design thought and action.
UnQuote
These models have all come out of about forty years of teaching design in a very unscientific manner, and design thinking is a product of design doing and can rarely be separated from he doing. Juhani Palasma talks about touch as the source of ideas in architecture and as a carpenter I have experienced the role of tacit knowledge at our finger tips in shaping and decision making in design, while making and exploring. But that is a new space to be addressed elsewhere.
Your second question needs another space in my model which could be called the rationalising or computational space and maybe computers will occupy ths space as we go forward from here.
Your third question s interesting and I think we need to look at both motivation as well as body's glands and its chemical and muscular actions that could drive design thinking if they occur in the right combination, perhaps arriving at new levels of excitation and eventually Flow!
By the way, we are holding a conference in Ahmedabad where Klaus Krippendorff and Wolfgang Jonas are keynote speakers. Should you be interested do check out the website for more information.
Design for a Billion conference at IIT Gandhinagar 7 to 9 November 2014 http://www.iitgn.ac.in/dfb/
I have to find time to answer Ken and Paul on this list! Hopefully soon after the conference. Ken should look up Richard Dawkins, The Ancestors Tale where use of fire in front of caves in South Africa is dated at 2 million years ago. This was a design act, not science. The science of fire came much later. This even predates the making of the stone axe with a handle which is a definite design act as well and not a random chance occurrence. And Paul, I am not upset by your critique, but I do not agree with your point of view. Harold Nelson uses fire as a design act in his book The Design Way which also throws a lot of light on the question of science, religion and design, worth debating it seems.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my iPad at home on the NID campus
5 November 2014 at 3.10 pm IST
Prof M P Ranjan
Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
Adjunct Professor (Design) Ahmedabad University Author of blog : http://www.designforindia.com Archive of papers : http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP Sent from my iPad
> On 05-Nov-2014, at 9:18 am, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> (This version with correct url)
>
> Dear MP,
>
> You write beautifully when you ask where ideas come from and reply that they come from "deep immersion in reality with our senses wide open seeking, not just eyes wide open, I include here the mind, body and soul, all are in play here, and the seeking is for a variety of possible directions that lead to several alternate resource maps being processed into numerous compositions that set the stage for ideas to emerge from these juxtapositions of real sense data"
>
> It’s a great starting point. There are three questions that follow in terms of using that idea for designers and design researchers:
>
> 1. How does the idea production process happen and what can we learn from understanding it?
> 2. Because science and mathematical modelling are part of our human experience of the world, how do we include them in understanding where ideas come from?
> 3. How does the concept of creating ideas fit with knowledge about how bodies function biologically whilst creating new ideas or solving problems?
>
> Happily, the answers to 3. help give the answers to all.
>
> Put simply, the biological evidence indicates that our internal biological bodily processes in creating ideas comprise a reflexive dynamic inter-relationship between slight changes to the physiology of our bodies; our perception of those changes (often called emotions or feelings); and our thoughts, and the ideas and images in our heads. This can trivially be extended to our acts of doing like, drawing, painting, craft and playing trombone.
>
> As far as I know at this time, the first useful explanation of this reflexive dynamic interdependency between bodily changes, emotions/feelings, and thoughts that linked this process to the biological evidence was in Bastick, T. (1982) 'Intuition: How we think and act', John Wiley & Sons. If I remember right that was also the first text to review more than a million documents, and in those days by hand! Following Bastick, Antonio Damasio presented an array of evidence in his books from the 1990s onwards that provided more detail of the process. In 2003, Bastick refined his earlier analyses to include the newer biological understanding in 'Intuition: Evaluating the construct and its impact on creative thinking' Kingston: Stoneman & Lang.
>
> If you want a short easy-to-read version, I described the above
> process in 2000 in Love, T. (2000). Computerising Affective Design
> Cognition. International Journal of Design Computing, 2. available at
>
> http://www.love.com.au/docs/2000/CADC.pdf and also in Love, T.
> (2001). Concepts and Affects in Computational and Cognitive Models of
> Designing. In J. S. Gero, M. L. Maher (Eds.), Computational and
> Cognitive Models of Creative Design (pp. 3-23). Sydney: University of
> Sydney available at http://www.love.com.au/docs/2001/CACCMD01.pdf as
> well as several of my more recent papers at
> http://www.love.com.au/docs/publications.htm . (My apologies for the
> quality of the online versions. All are pre-prints and Ken has been
> reminding me to clean the formatting and convert them to pdf.
> Hopefully I will manage these two soon. )
>
> Conclusions:
>
> By taking into account the biological understanding of how we create ideas, it becomes clear that it is all and everything of our experience and learning and knowledge provides the basis for the ideas we produce and the breadth, usefulness of beauty of those ideas. This all and everything also includes science and mathematical modelling as well as past evidence, memories and learning.
>
> Put simply, learning and knowledge from science and mathematical modelling and analyses ADD to the learning and knowledge we gain from direct perceptual experience.
>
> The more complicated version is that science and mathematical modelling ADD much more than they might be expected and typically can extend the basis for creating ideas many orders beyond what can be achieved through direct perception of experience.
>
> Best wishes ,
> Terry
>
> ---
> Dr Terence Love
> PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
>
> Honorary Fellow
> IEED, Management School
> Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
> ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
>
> 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: [log in to unmask]
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of M P Ranjan
> Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2014 1:20 AM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Cc: M P Ranjan; Paul Mike Zender
> Subject: Re: Evidence-Based Practice in a Changing World Economy
>
> Dear Paul Mike Zender
>
> Yes, knowledge is not much use in design in its early stages, it is insights that truly matter, and those who have been steeped in science beliefs through indoctrination are going to be quite week kneed when it dawns on them that this is indeed the case.
>
> I do not dismiss science, but it is useful for justification, but it does not contribute to finding the right direction for and unknown or even unknowable kind of situation which is the characteristic of all wicked problems in design.
>
> You make me sound like some strange "fakir" dancing around a fire in search of strange illicit ideas! Perhaps you should read Jon Kolko on design synthesis, indeed The Magic of Design is the title of one of his books. Kolko is a young researcher who seems to have got it right. Check out his teachings at the Austin Centre for Design which for me places him at the very top of the list of schools which show some understanding of design and its processes, way ahead of many well known universities steeped in science knowledge and hundreds of years of experience.
>
> Where do ideas come from? Certainly not from a laboratory in the case of design situations. It comes from deep immersion in reality with our senses wide open seeking, not just eyes wide open, I include here the mind, body and soul, all are in play here, and the seeking is for a variety of possible directions that lead to several alternate resource maps being processed into numerous compositions that set the stage for ideas to emerge from these juxtapositions of real sense data that is as yet un-apprehended by all of science, since that is still in the future. See my model of mind body map on my academia.edu web archive.
>
> Does this make your knees week? Many of my students with great accomplishments from engineering and technology schools do have this week knee moments when they realise that their 25 years of science biased education does not help them in complex design situations with systems complexity and human intentions in conflict with other stake holders. This goes well beyond market driven design opportunities that industry and business would like to use.
>
> My conviction in this matter is quite deep but if you have evidence that shows an alternate reality of design, I am all ears. Design that I understand is about shaping the future which is as yet unknown and indeed unknowable by the use of science. We can speculate about the future but design gives us a handle to shape it and make choices as we explore potential compositions. Human use of fire about 2 million years ago was not a response to some scientific understanding. It was a leap of faith that provided security against other beings, fire as security was indeed, designed.
>
> With warm regards
>
> M P Ranjan
> from my iPad at home
> 4 November 2014 at 10.45 pm IST
>
> Prof M P Ranjan
> Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
> Adjunct Professor (Design) Ahmedabad University Author of blog :
> http://www.designforindia.com Archive of papers :
> http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP Sent from my iPad
>
>> On 04-Nov-2014, at 8:17 pm, Paul Mike Zender <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> Luke and thread participants:
>>
>> Thank your for this topic and your thoughtful translation of evidence based medicine into a design context.
>> Like Ken and several others, and unlike Birger, I see many parallels between design and medicine (solving problems, meeting human need/user centered). To Birger, medicine was also afloat on a sea of uncertainty once, think bleeding people and applying leaches, but thankfully less so today.
>>
>> My experience is that design is ahead of medicine in user-centered research methods and practices. My experience is that design is woefully behind medicine in evaluation and knowledge built on evaluation. I don’t think your translation of medical definition caught this. This may be because medicine is so far ahead of design in developing knowledge to guide practice that in medical definition this got just a few words ”clinically relevant research, often from the basic sciences of medicine.” Medicine has a whole basic sciences foundation! It has developed many, many specific and proven measures by which to judge practice: blood pressure, blood sugar, 02 level, electrolyte balance, on and on it goes.
>>
>> Design has so little guiding knowledge for practice.
>>
>> It’s possible design has little guiding knowledge because design has few evaluative tools and methods to measure the effectiveness of what we design. As design moves from objects to programs, systems, and services we in design have even fewer methods and tools for evaluation. David asked for examples, this year I had a health program design project in Togo with a nice sized trial (4,000+ subjects) go partially inconclusive because of flaws in the study protocol (the control group teachers were also trained in the hygiene curriculum). This is an innovative program to help life and culture per Klaus' vision. While there is more to design than seeking evidence, evidence has a proven habit of building knowledge to guide more effective practice. My experience taught me that evidence gets harder to obtain the more you try to change systems, cultures, and societies. That doesn't make evidence less critical unless you are indifferent to the outcome of your social or cultural redesign.
>>
>> A biomedical informatics colleague of mine, Dr. John Pestian - top in his field and creator/designer of a very innovative and effective system for diagnosing suicide - once said, “Truth and facts are stubborn things.” If your response is ‘whose truth and what facts’ then you won’t seek evidence-based design innovation.
>>
>> Those arguing against science seem to me to be in danger of arguing against knowledge. In response to M P, from where do ideas for innovation come? Are you proposing a revelation-based epistemology where ideas pop into your head as an alternative to an experience based one where the ideas come from past experience?
>>
>> We should not give up seeking evidence before we even start gathering it.
>>
>> Best…
>>
>> Mike Zender
>>
>> stone cutter and cathedral designer
>> University of Cincinnati
>> School of Design
>>
>>
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