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dear eduardo, i just followed your use of language. your speaking about "gathering" suggests the activity (or practice) of collecting, putting together, taking possession of something that, just as in the verb "finding" entails, must have been there to begin with. unlike what you are suggesting in the current post, the word "gathering" doesn't designate anything about what you do with what you have gathered. gathering and finding also are human actions, requiring effort. this would not be so if you were to say that information hits you, disturbs you, impresses you. speaking of "gathering" metaphorically entails that there must be something there to be gathered or found. i am not suggesting that pebbles are information or that information comes in the form of pebbles, but that you use information as if it were a tangible object, something that is there or not there to be picked up and processed. i think this epistemology is strange to say the least. what about saying that information is created in the process of reading, that it is a reader's (or researcher's) creation (of certainties where uncertainties were felt before)? This would make cognition a creative process, a process of designing something (reality) to be seen as such. conceptualizing information as existing to be gathered (by researchers or designers) is an objectivist stance, i prefer a human-centered stance, one that does not contradict everything we know about human biology and sociology klaus -----Original Message----- From: Eduardo Corte Real [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 1:27 PM To: Klaus Krippendorff; [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Design as Research? Dear Klaus, first, I was a little further away from these axioms as you may see in a following post. Second, If you go gather pebbles in the beach you use the word gather to designate what you would be doing with the pebbles. To a non-native English speaker it could be very confusing if gathering means a different thing when you gather information from when you gather pebbles. This would be a strange conception. Third, you also assumed that I find the process of finding information done with effort. Effort has nothing to do with it and I never spoke of finding; I spoke of processing, which you would agree is determined by the goals to achieve in the Design process. Also, I never assumed that information is like pebbles, you assumed it for me. I would say that information is either grains of sand (one grain-no grain) or pebbles plus shells plus sea weed plus driftwood, plus very old beer cans from Morocco, dead jellyfish, a girl in bikini coming my way. In my non-English view of English I cannot gather all this (especially because the girl in bikini would probably not want to be gathered... along with the jellyfish). If you have the design of throwing pebbles in the sea so they can jump more that five times, in my non-English misconceptions, I wouldn't say that I should start gathering pebbles, but that that I must start collecting pebbles. Why? Because, since I had the design of doing pebble jumping, I would make a collection of flat-sided pebbles. These pebbles although gathered were selected to make a collection and this must be diverse from gathering pebbles per se. Higher processing of information than gathering happens just because of such a childish design. Ooo, you are already making me long for summer vacations again. Sniff. Cheers, from this side of the Atlantic, Eduardo ----- Original Message ----- From: "Klaus Krippendorff" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 5:43 PM Subject: Re: Design as Research? eduardo, in suggesting: 1.. All non-creative design methods are information gathering methods. 2.. All creative design methods are information processing methods you assume that information is a thing to be gathered like pebbles in the beach, as if it were there to begin with, found with effort and processed. this is a very strange conception to be avoided for the sake of clarity klaus -----Original Message----- From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Eduardo Corte Real Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 5:50 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Design as Research? Hi Terry, And how was your winter? Mild as our summer? I just received a text by Tufan Orel "The Design Object and its anticipatory context: an note on creative design" in Revue Sciences et Techniques de la conception Vol 3. nš1/ 1994. Orel, that you might remember for coining the term designology, feels the necessity to call to an activity: Creative Design that, to my extent, admits the existence of a non-creative Design. Let's go back a bit. Every freshman knows that there were Pioneers of Modern Design (Pevsner). If there were such people as pioneers there should be the Modern Designers. One of the characteristics of this lot was to create new objects that confronted users with their ignorance and pitiful whishes and convictions of coziness and decoration. The Designer which, we might suggest is fully embodied of his/her Social Power, is the Modern designer reasoning on his own, not doing research about the users but imposing both his/her Aesthetics as his/hers Ethics upon the society. This was the founding Myth of "The Designer". Orel proposes the adoption of Dewey?s "Mental Theater" with Strindberg's "Mental Experiment" in order to develop an imaginative "anticipatory context" that could overcome the dualism of utopian vs realism (most of the poisonous effects of this dualism were an heritage from Modernism). I find that both the mental theater and the mental experiment are excellent design methods but are NOT information gathering methods. I would risk to say that exciting your (or mine imagination), through drawing, is an excellent design method but is not an information gathering method but an information processing method. I would risk therefore two axioms: 1.. All non-creative design methods are information gathering methods. 2.. All creative design methods are information processing methods Cheers, Eduardo ----- Original Message ----- From: "Terence Love" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2:16 AM Subject: Re: Design as Research? > Hi Eduardo, > How are you going? I trust summer has been good in Lisbon? > > 'necessarily but not always true...' > > ...suggests that all the other discussion that depends on it might be > either > not necessary or not true...? > > Warm regards, > Terry > >