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Dear Birger, Without getting into detail, as I am literally, "on the run", You said ---snip----Birger 18.3.13 saysFalsification is part of a deductive process: proposing a hypothesis and verifying it or falsifying it. This is a top down approach.In design where we work with moving targets and many levels of issues and where design is a constant learning process inductive reasoning , a bottom up approach might be valuable. Inductive reasoning avoids pre-made assumptions, hypothesis or research questions. Grounded theory is one such approach. I am not knowledgeable in ethnography but e.g. Fetterman describes an inductive process in ethnographic research. He talks not of falsification but triangulation as the heart of ethnographic validity (page 89 in Ethnography Step by Step). He talks of crystallization as central process when everything falls in place. Page 101. It sounds familiar to a design process.Inductive and abductive processes are feasible in other fields and it seems reasonable that this is also feasible for design research. Therefor falsification can't be a global approach that solves every problem. At least in design research we need to be open to a varity of different approaches.---snip----If you read my post, this is not exactly what I am saying.The issue is precisely this confusion. Design for me is not about creating hypotheses, in the way that I described it. IN research, we may use research methods in creating designs, but designing is not researching in the sense, I believe, that Derek was explaining. IN research, the position of the researcher is to choose either an inductive or deductive approach. Each one has its appropriate methods and usually we make the choice to be inductive or deductive and then proceed with the approach. In research we normally do not mix up the two, even when we use "mixed methods" another topic altogether. You are correct about the idea of falsification and POpper is part of the positivist paradigm if I recall.As a researcher interested in interpretive methods, I position myself as a researcher with specific writings that have nothing to do with prescriptive methods such as those you describe in your post and are certainly not "top down" in terms of research, but rather "from the ground up".I am speaking about Interpretive Inquiry which has grown from perspectives such as Blumer and Mead and others, and these are something else entirely. This also has nothing to do with ethnography in the approach I favor.From my perspective, trying to "fit" the design process into a falsification mode is not appropriate. I am interested in understanding the phenomenon from the ^perspective of lived experience. I do not through this into a paradigm of positivism or post-positivism to do my research. RegardsSorry have to go for now,Tiiu ----------------------------------------------------------------- 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 -----------------------------------------------------------------