Dear Danielle,
I appreciate your detailed post. It describes very well how many of the new cohorts of design researchers think. And the new turn in design research. I am very well aware of it, actually, tracing it for at least 20 years. I am very thankful that you put so succinctly and in one place the design research implications of the embodiment approach. I actually am interested in it and I occasionally use it.
And now, on a different note, to muse a little bit about certain ideas on this list, in particular about the hands-on thinking. I will criticize the addictive application of these ideas in design research. I also want to mention that I exclude here the real crafts people because the reasoning in the crafts is very different compared to design and design research.
I am concerned that the majority of people do not understand Phenomenology, but tinker with the word and believe they are doing phenomenological research. Most of the design researchers do not understand Merleau-Ponty. Merleau-Ponty is great in his ability to see the world differently and use this different perspective for comprehending particular phenomena. This is a very good approach for particular purposes, but we always should be aware of its limits of applicability. When Merleau-Ponty's ideas are used as a hammer to hammer everything (like a little boy, the old adage), then things become ridiculous. I am in pain when I see so many people falling in the trap of absolutizing one point of view, exaggerating it to the point of "tell all," and then imposing this template on everything.
I cannot understand how people can so strongly believe that the body organ for thinking is a hand or a leg. After the Enlightenment (the discussion a few days ago) we know very well that the organ for thinking is the brain. All the rest is metaphors, place-holders, and misunderstandings.
Now, we have here two very different paradigmatic approaches. We don't need to argue. There is no reconciliation between different (scholarly, scientific) paradigms. That is a paradigm -- an intellectual realm of its own that is incompatible with the other competing paradigms.
I would not engage in paradigmatic discussions. The paradigmatic discussions and disputes are not for design researchers. They are for philosophers of science. Let's be considerate. I would not argue in depth about the current embodiment fad. I will leave this to philosophers of science. By the way, I have worked for 10 years with excellent philosophers of science and have learned something from them. But the most important thing that I learned is that the design philosopher is transparent to the philosopher of science. No one likes philosophers of science. Scientists/scholars are afraid of them because these guys have X-ray eyes for the ideas and thinking of disciplinary scholars.
I am looking at the processes of thinking through the lenses of Activity Theory (AT). From that perspective, scientists only laugh when they hear that someone is thinking with their hands. This expression can be used as a metaphor and a stepping stone for understanding the thinking of the makers, and the minds of the makers, etc., but it cannot be accepted as a finding. Sorry. We have gone back in the Middle Ages when there has been a "research question" "How many devils can sit on the top of a needle?"
I can write a book about the embodiment turn and how it is perceived from the position of Activity Theory. (Pure nuisance and inability to understand the genius of Merleau-Ponty). But I don't have time. Plus, when the whole world believes that people think with their hands, I don't see a reason to fight. I don't want to be Giordano Bruno and get burned on the stake; nor do I want to spend my life in torture like Galileo Galilei.
Best wishes to all makers, tinkers, and hands-thinkers. I am sincere. Everyone has the right of their view point.
Kind regards,
Lubomir
-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Danielle Wilde
Sent: Sunday, March 21, 2021 3:31 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Design was a craft: Can -- should -- it be more than craft?
Dear Lubomir,
in response to your comments and concern:
> Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2021 18:13:32 +0000
> From: Lubomir Savov Popov <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Design was a craft: Can -- should -- it be more than craft?
>
> I am not sure what we gain from this hands-on thinking when design is about heads-on thinking. It is crystal clear. At least for the architectural designers. The problem comes from the industrial designers who still have adversity to a simple bachelor program of study and want to touch everything with their hands.
- snip -
> My concern is that designer want to think with their hands (if this is
> possible at all) rather than with their heads. So much about
> designers. Take no offence. This is just an intellectual exercisei
my concern is that some designers believe they can design by thinking alone, as if thinking is best undertaken as an abstract, intellectual endeavour. However, thinking is a phenomenologically rich undertaking that is, and can be consciously, amplified by moving, making and (situated or not) doing. Architecture is not my field, though I recall concerns being voiced when architecture moved from the physical act of drawing at a drafting table, to drawing in a CAD program, as well as away from model making as thinking, to representation.
Even abstract forms of thinking such as undertaken in mathematics, physics and philosophy engage the body in the thinking process; in acts of making tangible. See physicist Richard Feynman's infamous disagreement with historian Charles Weiner, who pointed out how good it is to have a record of Feynman's thinking in his notebooks. Feynman pushed back strongly, asserting that the notebooks are not a record of his thinking, in fact the notes in the notebooks are the actual thinking, unfolding, in process (see the opening note in Andy Clark's (2008) Supersizing the Mind). and when I think of Wittgenstein, I think of him as pacing... possibly due to Derek Jarman's 1993 film, Wittgenstein, though my memory is cloudy and it may simply be an impression informed by the walk down the hill from the metro to the cinema
As a design researcher, interested in process and transformational change, I rarely make tangible things. Rather I do what I am starting to describe as 'infrastructure agency' - my (hardworking, talented and incredibly creative) team and I do as little as possible, to support people to develop a sense of their own agency so that they might become agents of change in their own lives-move from personally responsible, to participatory, to social justice oriented forms of (enacting) citizenship (building on Westheimer, Kahne & Rogers, 2000. p.3-6). In large part, this requires involving people in embodied forms of thinking-through moving, making and doing. It involves thinking through tinkering, through prototyping and through other engagements with materiality; through making, doing, eating, experiencing, reflecting. Thinking with the whole body, through all of our senses. These ways of thinking, and indeed this way of doing design, draws directly from acts of crafting. As Sennet tells us: in craft, there is a constant interplay between tacit knowledge and self-conscious awareness (2009, p.9). I quote myself quoting others, to unpack this:
> Rosner et al. speak of how a craftsperson playing with their materials is led towards finding what it is they want to make (2013). Craft and working with one's materials provides an openness of enquiry. Such a process permits using the materials and tools to think with. What emerges is a research process that is a "speculative indeterminate progression (...) reminiscent of what Tim Ingold (2006) terms wayfinding in comparison to navigation: feeling one's way rather than using a map" (in Bardzell et al., 2012). This way of thinking creates a continual feedback mechanism within the research structure that is open, flexible and responsive. Just as craftspeople calibrate the motions of their work in direct response to the work just performed (Adamson, 2010), researchers [and, I suggest anyone engaged in thinking] also need to be open to where the data, research, design enquiry, and participant reactions might lead them.
-in Wilde, Underwood & Pohlner 2014, p.368
> There is strong precedence of textile-based craft metaphors as tools for thinking: devices for elaborating new meaning, and communicating processes that may be complex and non-reductive in form. Researchers are re-thinking art, aesthetics and knowledge production through metaphors such as "spinning to elaborate new meanings" (Jefferies, 2016. p. 4) and "patchworking ways of knowing" (Lindström & Ståhl, 2016): both to know and to make the world in one move. But do such approaches offer a new foundation? Ajun Appaduri (2014. p. 9) posits design as a practice that continuously reimagines its own conditions of possibility, drawing focus to the forces of materiality in relation to design. He proposes that "materiality can be viewed as a design context, and design can be treated as a form of vibration (in the sense of Jane Bennett's idea of "vibrant matter") that disturbs and creatively animates the material world and adds new forms of movement to already moving and dynamic materials" (Bennet, 2010; and/in Appaduri pp. 9-10).
>
-in Wilde & Underwood, 2018, p.10
and while I readily acknowledge that the thinking that is done with the hands and other parts of the body is not always attended to mindfully, and when it is, is not always easy to bring into an articulate space because most people are not practiced at doing so, and in Western (formal and non-formal) educational approaches we are not typically trained to do so. Nonetheless, I strongly believe that when we imagine that thinking only occurs in the grey matter in our heads, we are mistaken, and are short-changing our understanding of what we are, and are capable of, as embodied beings.
Best,
Danielle
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https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.daniellewilde.com%2F&data=04%7C01%7Clspopov%40BGSU.EDU%7Cb44fa9a4143841b1350a08d8ec3b572e%7Ccdcb729d51064d7cb75ba30c455d5b0a%7C1%7C1%7C637519086914036335%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=gb3k5KLXxrbCOcSi3%2B6YwN1B1whDqy7Ly%2Bhrw0l3N4g%3D&reserved=0
Adamson, G. The Craft Reader. Berg, Oxford, UK 2010
Appaduri, A. Forword. In Design as Future-Making; Yalavich, S., Adams, B., Eds.; Bloomsbury: London, UK; New York, NY, USA, 2014; pp. 9-11.
Bardzell, S., Rosner, D., Bardzell, J. Crafting Quality in Design: Integrity, Creativity, and Public Sensibility. In Proc. DIS 2012, 11-20, 2012
Bennet, J. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things; Duke University Press: Durham, UK; London, UK, 2010.
Clark, Andy. Supersizing the mind: Embodiment, action, and cognitive extension. OUP USA, 2008.
Ingold, T. "Walking the plank: meditations on a process of skill." In Defining technological literacy: towards an epistemological framework. New York, Palgrave Macmillan. 2006.
Jefferies, J. Editorial introduction. In The Handbook of Textile Culture; Jefferies, J., Wood Conroy, D., Clark, H., Eds.; Bloomsbury: London, UK, 2016; pp. 3-16.
Lindström, K.; Ståhl, A. Patchworking ways of knowing and making. In The Handbook of Textile Culture; Jefferies, J., Wood Conroy, D., Clark, H., Eds.; Bloomsbury: London, UK, 2016; pp. 65-78.
Rosner, D., Ikemiya, M., Kim, D., Koch, K. Designing with Traces. In Proc. CHI 2013, 1649-1658, 2013
Sennett, R. The Craftsman, Penguin, London, UK 2009
Westheimer, Joel, Joesph Kahne, and Bethany Rogers. "What kind of citizen? The politics of assessing democratic values." (2000).
Wilde, D., Underwood, J. Designing towards the Unknown: Engaging with Material and Aesthetic Uncertainty. Informatics 2018, 5(1), 1; doi:10.3390/informatics5010001 Available [online] at: https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fres.mdpi.com%2Fd_attachment%2Finformatics%2Finformatics-05-00001%2Farticle_deploy%2Finformatics-05-00001-v2.pdf&data=04%7C01%7Clspopov%40BGSU.EDU%7Cb44fa9a4143841b1350a08d8ec3b572e%7Ccdcb729d51064d7cb75ba30c455d5b0a%7C1%7C1%7C637519086914046335%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=n0PH%2Bl0NpL8y7DV4%2FOsdgWQR%2FZdFfhylN2Od2Kjdo5I%3D&reserved=0
Danielle Wilde, Jenny Underwood, and Rebecca Pohlner. 2014. PKI: crafting critical design. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems (DIS '14). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 365-374. DOI:https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fdoi.org%2F10.1145%2F2598510.2598603&data=04%7C01%7Clspopov%40BGSU.EDU%7Cb44fa9a4143841b1350a08d8ec3b572e%7Ccdcb729d51064d7cb75ba30c455d5b0a%7C1%7C1%7C637519086914046335%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C1000&sdata=SDvH7FUGulwJPuGw2Cyve%2F8yb3nKfK%2BUtVcFcu78AU4%3D&reserved=0
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