Ken and friends,
Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm thrilled you see the light (ahem), as Nordhaus's 1998
publication is a sublime example of what we, as designers, could accomplish
through our own research. In his own words, "making a complete reckoning of
the impact of new and improved consumer goods on our living standards is an
epic task." He is not alone in the pursuit. We are here too.
But are we equipped for the task?
An interesting aspect of Nordhaus's work on light, was that he revitalized
perhaps the most ancient and banal economic indicator, the price value of
labor. Nordhaus needed a creative solution to correlate and project the
impact of product design to society, and the price value of labor - though
a roughly hewn measure - enabled him to make projections both backward and
forward in time. It is here, through the weaving of creativity,
materiality, classical economics and longitudinal thinking that I find the
work to be just short of bliss. Yet it also shows that the economists have
an advantage here... and we could perhaps borrow a little of their approach
in our own scholarship.
While design research can be liberating in its future-forward focus as the
'science of the artificial,' I have long found it difficult to extrapolate
the greater implications of most research efforts. The great variance
across research products can be refreshing, but the more dissertations I've
read in the field, the less certain I am to define it. The third leg, as
Ken describes of the scientific method, is a rigor in research design made
possible partly because assessment criteria are formulated via the initial
stages of observation. We have many frameworks, but we do not have shared
modular units of assessment criteria equivalent to the price-value of
labor. As we design forward - projecting new concepts into the world
through making things - what do we have of common standards, units and
criteria for assessment? Do we have an approach to build criteria? If so,
do we share common standards and tactics to transition knowledge across
silos of research? I argue that we do not, and this undermines the
maturation of our field as a research discipline.
Industry, today, tends to rely on criteria such usability, accessibility,
or adoption - these have a clear footing in the demands of business. We
also see modules emerge in technical research settings - like the 7 point
Likert scale or the Technology Readiness Scale (TRL). But in the domain of
more academic design research that touches humanities, environmentalism,
and social change - what are the measures? What are the demands of our
research community? Suddenly the conversation explodes to topics like
frameworks or big debates on what is design. Frameworks for sustainability
and social justice abound. Design is this and that. Every PhD has a
framework. This can be all well and good, but note, Nordhaus wasn't
assessing light as a moral object or relying on a philosophical framework.
His work was powerful because the assessment was granular. Equipped with
the labor function, he could examine how a set of product
iterations changed the history of human labor, and by extension, the
quality of life over time – thus satisfying the greater demand of his
research field.
So I question, by what means can we also systematically extrapolate upon
the findings of design research with a little more precision and a little
less preference? There are probably 70,000 design frameworks created in
the last 50 years that sit on dusty shelves - so maybe we too, can take the
risk to get more granular? This does not sound like a popular sentiment,
yet granularity also demands accountability, driving our field to do better
research and to generate stronger research. Research that moves mountains.
We might all agree that transportation design for example, is not merely
about aesthetics, or about miles per gallon in an era of climate change. To
design forward, can we thus borrow and build forward leading measures of
impact by which we can compare our designs across the whole span of
categories? Be it the years of sunlight captured in fossil fuels, the
carbon units that deplete the atmosphere, or the impact on human
lifespan distributed across our future generations via the scalar
modification of automobile infrastructure? In contrast, I've heard 15
years of critiques about various sustainable design works "lacking a
certain soulfulness." What does that even mean?
More broadly, are we yet in a position - as a community - to carry out the
work, to build some standardized and shared evaluatory mechanisms of design
in the world, through which we build a more rigorous research discipline?
Of course, that isn't something to which everyone would agree that we need,
or should pursue. Yet without such an approach, how can one really justify
any body of research in design as avante garde or not avante garde? Like
Ken, we can examine the rigour of structure and method. But to look at such
work and make inferences on how it matters in the universe? We suddenly
default to the artistic tradition of speculative critique.
Decades ago, the notion of design as a research field was awkward and
poorly defined. No doubt the argument that we should together build and
commit to future-looking indicators to better assess ourselves, and our
works, perhaps generates the same feelings. But we should not be afraid to
be more accountable to one another or to challenge our future selves.
Rather, we should be emboldened.
- Mitch
On Wed, Oct 14, 2020 at 12:29 PM Ken Friedman <
[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Mitch (and all),
>
> Thanks for the article by William Nordhaus (1998 [1997]). This is both an
> example of avant-garde design research — research using a designerly
> approach — and a beautiful demonstration of rigorous thinking using
> multiple methods.
>
> While I know Nordhaus’s work from other articles, this was new to me.
> Thanks for posting it. Because Nordhaus points to another article in the
> volume where he originally published this, I tracked down the volume
> (Bresnahan and Gordon 1997). Interesting work!
>
> What is important in relation to avant-garde design research is that
> Nordhaus brings together a lively theoretical hypothesis, careful empirical
> observation in recent times, careful empirical observation using historical
> evidence, and careful experimentation of his own. Much of the historical
> evidence also involves reports on the results of experimentation, though
> not all. Some simply reports historical information while showing how it is
> useful in today’s world.
>
> Harold Morowitz once discussed the importance of three approaches to
> research in the sciences to explain why modern science made more progress
> than Greek science was able to do. Of the “three great conceptual
> approaches to science” he wrote, “– observation experimentation and theory
> – experimentation was unknown to the classical Greek savants. They worked
> back and forth between observation and theory and therefore lacked the
> powerful weapon of falsification to prune wrong theories” (Morowitz 1993:
> 161-2).
>
> Plato’s science stood on the single leg of theory. Aristotle’s science had
> two legs — theory and observation. Science — and research in general — made
> significant gains in the great age of physics when Galileo, Newton, and
> Bacon developed the concept of robust experiment. This made scientific
> progress possible by stabilizing scientific method with its third leg.
> Experiment allows us to choose among alternative theories moving in
> increasingly better directions.
>
> The challenge of avant-garde design research involves a willingness to try
> new ideas — along with a willingness to test them to find out whether our
> new ideas hold up.
>
> Nordhaus offers a terrific example. In 2018, Nordhaus shared the Nobel
> Prize in Economic Sciences with Paul Romer. Nordhaus won the prize "for
> integrating climate change into long-run macroeconomic analysis.” His work
> often brings together the findings of different disciplines and fields in
> startling and entertaining ways.
>
> It would be a real joy to read design articles that address challenging
> concepts with this kind of careful interdisciplinary rigor.
>
> Yours,
>
> Ken
>
> —
>
> References
>
> Bresnahan, Timothy F., and Robert J. Gordon, eds. 1997. National Bureau of
> Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 58, Chicago:
> University of Chicago Press.
>
> Morowitz, Harold J. 1993. Entropy and the Magic Flute. New York: Oxford
> University Press.
>
> Nobel Prize Organization. 2018. William D. Nordhaus Facts. URL:
> https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2018/nordhaus/facts/ <
> https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/economic-sciences/2018/nordhaus/facts/>
> Date Accessed 2020 October 14.
>
> Nordhaus, William D. 1998. Do Real-Output and Real-Wage Measures Capture
> Reality? The History of Lighting Suggests Not. Cowles Foundation Paper No.
> 957. New Haven, Connecticut: Cowles Foundation for Economic Research at
> Yale University. Originally published in: The Economics of New Goods,
> edited by Timothy F. Bresnahan and Robert J. Gordon. 1997. National Bureau
> of Economic Research Studies in Income and Wealth, Vol. 58, Chicago:
> University of Chicago Press, pp. 29-70.
>
> --
>
> Mitch Sipus wrote:
>
> “When I was doing my PhD I found this paper by the economist
> WilliamNordhaus in which he wanted to understand how/why some technologies
> drivemore social change than others. To understand how the power of light
> shapedsociety he personally conducted lots of tests on the material
> processes ofusing and creating light. He made candles from fat. He burned
> oil made fromwhale blubber. He found old lightbulbs and measured their
> brightness. Hecarefully studied the length of time required for every light
> source to becreated and to consume itself. From this he made estimates
> about how somedifferent kinds of technologies have bigger effects - notably
> written inthe mid-90s he downplayed the internet as 'important.’
>
> “Here is a 20 minute interview with Nordhaus talking about the research
> -the smells the emotions the tangible processes.
>
>
> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light
> <
> https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/04/25/306862378/episode-534-the-history-of-light
> >
>
> “I consider this paper an incredibly 'designerly' approach to
> economicsresearch given the experiential focus of material factors. It
> alsodemonstrates the value of quantification and taxonomies when
> makinginferences from the process of research by design. I hope one day to
> write something both as poetic and insightful.
>
> “The paper is short and attached here for convenience.”
>
> [I’ve attached it again to preserve the content of Mitch’s original post.
> — KF]
>
> --
>
> Ken Friedman, Ph.D., D.Sc. (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The
> Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji
> University in Cooperation with Elsevier | URL:
> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
> <
> http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
> >
>
> Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and
> Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Visiting Professor |
> Faculty of Engineering | Lund University ||| Email
> [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]> |
> Academia https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman <
> https://tongji.academia.edu/KenFriedman> | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn <
> http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn/>
>
>
>
> -
>
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