Dear Sid,

I would be grateful if you would clearly describe what makes 'design inquiry'
different from the ordinary sort of inquiry.

Best wishes

Terry

________________________

Dr. Terence Love
School of Design
Curtin University
Western Australia
Tel & Fax: +61 8 9305 7629
Email: [log in to unmask]
________________________

Copyright © 2000 by Terry Love. All rights reserved. This text
may be quoted and printed freely with proper acknowledgment.
========================================

From: "Sid Newton" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Internet Mail::[[log in to unmask]]; Internet Mail::[<[log in to unmask]>]

Subject: re: Design inquiry versus Scientific Inquiry
Date: 5/23/00 10:56 AM

Hi Terry
You said:
I strongly support your contention that science isn't the only justifiable
basis for research, and especially for design research. I am unhappy,
however, with your definition of 'design inquiry'. I feel that the simplest
approach to these issues is to regard information gathering as an activity
that supports but is different to designing. Other approaches go down
that conflatory path in which the term design eventually applies to all
activities and all things - 'used for everything and defining nothing'.
You suggest that, 
'Design inquiry, in this sense, comprises a range of scholarly research
methods' 
Then why not call scholarly research methods, 'scholarly research methods'.
At present I cannot see any justifiable reason to rebadge them as 'design
scholarly methods' and then infer that they are different (but the same)
activities. I welcome correction. 

In reply:
I am trying to emphasise a distinction between scholarly design research
methods and scholarly scientific research methods, which are NOT intended
to be equivalent. I do state that design research methods are a subset
of scholarly methods, but that is not the same as your interpretation.
As a hierarchy: Scholarship comprises both Design Inquiry and Scientific
Inquiry (and Other forms of inquiry). Design inquiry and scientific inquiry
are not the same, and they each have limited scope of application. I suggest
the mistake you are making is to interpret design inquiry as a form of
scientific inquiry. The idea is for academic research to broaden beyond
scientific inquiry, not for design inquiry to replace all things. I don’t
have a problem with scientific inquiry, except that it limits what problems
we see and what understandings we can sustain. That issue is particularly
pertinent to design practice.
You said:
I wonder if research and practice actually go together at all. Reflecting
on my own experiences, my practices improve with repetition (and practice)
but its hard to see how much of the information gathering changes my practices
(that is how I do particular activities as opposed to what activities
I do) - the
gathered information is the material that is practiced on or with. An
example from music goes something like - my guitar playing practice improves
as I manage to change and hopefully improve various bodily processes.
The research (notes on paper etc) only impacts on what is played not how
it is played - when I research music I am not researching practice at
all. When I actually research things that may be of direct benefit to
my practice - that will improve the ways my fingers move for example -
then I am mainly in the realm of science. . . When research is undertaken
to improve my feel for a piece of music then it is another form of information
gathering like buying sheet music except it is in the oral rather than
literal traditions. It might change the outcomes, but changing the practice
requires training rather than research.

In reply:
Oh you do tempt me. A key motivation for me in trying to step my research
practice outside of scientific inquiry is precisely BECAUSE the scientific
inquiry which you bring to your music playing has little to offer practice.
The Design Inquiry to which I allude will be judged precisely as science
fails to be judged, in terms of its contribution to how you play your
music and how designers practice design. Your characterisation of research
as information gathering is fine (if rather contained) as a description
of scientific inquiry, but NOT of design inquiry. I try to attend to this
issue by bringing the consideration of scholarship beyond knowledge (which
I define as a form of explicit externalised expression – your information
gathering exercise) to understanding which also would include a form of
knowing based on your being able to play the music in the first instance.
Do you, for example, not accept that your music playing might improve
simply by listening and watching and thinking about other other musicians
in action (without necessarily being able to be explicit about what that
difference is)?

You said:

To use Popper's (1976) incommensurate 3 worlds metaphor, research lies
in the world of theory, whereas practice (like grabbing) lies in the objective,

and for the agent, subjective worlds. 

In reply:
Scholarship lies in the world of understanding. Just because Popper doesn’t
leave room for what I am proposing because he explicitly defines design
inquiry out of the picture does not defeat my proposal. I have read Popper,
though some time ago. I understand his notion of conjecture and refutation
as a direct challenge to science that the world of theories (research)
is a construction, fabricated on propositions about the objective world
made by agents from the subjective world. The world of theories is the
world of science. It is a fabrication. Popper uses the world metaphor
to talk about scientific inquiry, not the notion of scholarship I outline.
Like any metaphor, the three worlds idea exposes certain issues and hides
others (for example, to see scientific inquiry as a set of three worlds
is to hide the possibility that other worlds exist beyond science). It
is informative that two people (you and I) can see such difference in
the same thing (Popper). It suggests that our understanding of other phenomena
might similarly benefit from different views. Not just different views
from within the framework of science, but different views from different
frameworks altogether.
--Sid.