Hi Ken,
I’m sorry to have been so cryptic. It’s the result of me reflecting on what is happening in my own field and that of other designers, and projecting that onto a larger canvas, finding a familiar resonance in what other are saying without explaining the underlying resonance.
I will try to be less cryptic by focusing on my own field of information design and communication more broadly. Yesterday after I wrote that note to the Phd list I mentioned my post to a close colleague, Alex Tyers, and he asked “do you mean Virtue Signalling? “ “Yes” was my reply, "but a little more than that”.
So, as briefly as possible, I will elaborate. Communication is a major aspect of all research—often unnoticed and treated like a beast of burden with a purely limited function of carrying information from point to point. But communication is much more than that because it is central to the rituals we participate in: rituals of display, status, authority, and much more. These intertwine and are there like a rambling thicket, even in the clinic, laboratory, and the presentation of research findings. Except, unlike a thicket, we cannot cut our way through to find the hidden roses, without inevitably chopping at the fragile petals. Too many mixed metaphors! But you get my point, I hope.
So, Ken, we probably partly agree when you say 'that most things don’t work as they should’ or, as in my case: most things don’t work despite the belief that they do. Because most communication is ephemeral, we often take the fact of communication as evidence of its success. Nothing more clearly demonstrates the disjuncture between “fact” and “evidence" than the massive efforts at communication by government during the current pandemic and the widespread misunderstanding of the information by the public.
Like the Shaman who makes a rain making ceremony which is not followed by rain, might say to the disappointed villagers: “Well I did my best!”
Increasingly, when questioned about the quality of their methods, I am finding designers in many fields, including my own, saying “well I did my best”. Hence my mournful tone. Token gestures have become the norm. The norm needs changing to something more tangible, more rigorous, and more useful to people.
As a response to my own mournful tone, I am involved with setting up a publishing program at our Institute that will aim to change the prevailing norm.
David
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|