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Dear Victor, thanks for clarifying what you mean. Maybe this finally releases us of the unbearable battle of interpretations about what you REALLY mean. By the way, there is an excellent PhD thesis from AUT: Frances Joseph (2010) Mnemotechne of Design - Ontology and Design Research Theories. She is explicitly working with a concept mapping tool. This is the beginning of my examiner´s report: ""Ontologies are human constructions that deny their constructedness." Klaus Krippendorff Introduction Frances Joseph´s thesis deals with the notorious phenomenon of various more or less incommensurate approaches / theories / terminologies / paradigms / ideologies / ... in dealing with design research and methodology. Everyone who is interested in meta-perspectives of design research is familiar with this "problem". The two standard reactions are either the forceful call for unification or the more composed stance to live with this plurality / mess. The candidate adopts the latter viewpoint and goes a considerable step forward: her intention is to make this confusing collection of diverse theories a usable and useful resource for future design researchers. She calls this her "mnemotechne-project" with menemotechne meaning the art and/or craft and technology (!) of memory. The three main research questions are: - How can different ways of reflecting about design research be understood in relation to one another? - Can the results of such understanding be used to inform the organisation of information about design research methodology? - Can new computational systems and technologies be used to support relational models of design theories? The author reports a shift in the course of dealing with the subject from an early focus on outcome (the design of a resource as a conventional formally based database system) towards process, strategy and methodology. The phenomenon of interest turned out to be too heterogeneous to be transferred into one single unified model without destroying its complex character. Therefore the author switched to a hermeneutical analysis of theories. The system design of the resource now served as a medium for further exploring, developing and testing the relational model of theories. The unified syntactic model became a semantic "bridging and mapping device" for the various models of theories. The theories under consideration were accepted in their respective singularity. This was an important decision in Frances Joseph´s research." For further information you should contact the author. Best, Jonas --- At 1:09 Uhr -0500 03.11.2011, Victor Margolin wrote: >Hi Rosann: >The point is not that one person or several will >do the definitive critical mapping of design's >and design research's history but that everyone >who teaches should develop a sense of what the >key literature in the field has been and is. >Thats how most fields work. Certainly you can >ask any art historian, sociologist, or political >scientist what are the important texts in their >field and they can tell you. If nobody knows >that in the design and design research fields, >then I suggest that lots of people dig in and >discover key texts for themselves. I was >thinking today about jazz musicians. I can't >imagine that you would meet a jazz musician >today who had never heard of Charlie Parker or >who had never listened to his music. Or to Sonny >Rollins, Horace Silver, Chick Corea, or Pat >Metheney. Maybe some straight ahead players have >not heard of Peter Brotzmann but I would say >that they should listen to him too. I have just >bought a book about wikinomics. Maybe this is a >grand wikiproject for the field. >Victor > >Victor Margolin >Professor Emeritus of Design History >Department of Art History >University of Illinois, Chicago > > > > > > > >On Nov 2, 2011, at 7:00 PM, PHD-DESIGN automatic digest system wrote: > >> Date: Wed, 2 Nov 2011 13:21:50 +0000 > > From: Kevin Walker <[log in to unmask]> >> Subject: Re: Gunther Kress >> >> Gunther is a colleague and is deeply concerned >>with design, in the context of the social >>semiotics he pioneered with Theo Van Leeuwen, >>and methods of multimodal analysis with Carey >>Jewitt. I haven't written a paper about his >>work but several of my students are applying >>his ideas to analyse things like wayfinding >>systems, construction sites, and schools. I did >>publish an interview with him which I hope >>gives a simple introduction to his work: >> >> http://www.exhibitresearch.com/cms/?q=node/1241 >> >> I would also recommend his book with Theo, >>Multimodal Discourse, which addresses design >>directly.