Dear Ricardo

Thank you for your posts which I have enjoyed reading. My response is not about 
creativity research but rather about research and design practice in general. 

The relation between research and design practice interests me very much because 
I am interested in improving the practice of design by engaging in research. And I 
have been trying to establish a perspective to see and hopefully practice research 
from a design point of view*. In the course of my struggle, I have often come across 
statement about the value of research to design practice and here I quote yours for discussion:

"The premise is that the more we know about these fundamental processes and their 
role in shaping phenomena in these areas the better equipped we are to improve our 
design practice by better understanding and drawing parallels to everyday experience".

I have questioned quietly the above premise and now feel that it is a good time and place 
to get some feedback on my ‘silly’ ideas.

The above premise is based on yet another assumption which is that we need to understand 
BEFORE we design. Researchers collect information, analyze it and interpret it, write it up 
and distribute it to designers, then designers can improve their design practice. 

It is indeed the most commonly held belief within and outside the field of design. However,
 J. Christopher Jones (1991)has argued that the design problem and solution are 
interdependent. In other words, the problem is never stable and emerges as designers 
construct it. Designs happen in a context in which the act of designing will have an
 impact on constructing the problems and forming solutions to them. The study by 
Melican (2000) also supports this theory. Nigel Cross (1999) collects personal reflections 
from various ‘famous’ designers and speculates on a similar theory of designing. 
David Sless (2001) also suggests that "knowledge and understanding are nothing but
 our own making, and the point for designers is to identify at the moment of closure, 
some structure for making design decisions". In other words, there can never be 
ENGOUGH information to be gathered BEFORE designing. All these observations
 imply that designing is a way of finding out or constructing problems and solutions, 
and that designing happens simultaneously with understanding. Therefore, the 
permanent separation in time and space of understanding and designing doesn’t
 make sense for design. Nor does the complete separation of research and design. 

It may be true that research can increase our understanding of the world. However, 
designing is not a logical-deductive exercise (Lawson 1993) and it has to deal with 
‘wicked problems’. From facts to designs, there is a hole that descriptive or explanatory 
research results do not fill. Given that design is prescriptive by nature (Cross 1982), it is 
hard to imagine how research results, being descriptive or explanatory, can aid design 
decision making without the ability of the designers to interpret and integrate the 
information which keeps on changing its meanings while the designers use it to design.

My attempt here is not to dismiss the value of research or theory building or knowledge 
construction, but rather I am trying to see research, theory and knowledge from a design 
point of view. Your critical comments are most welcome.

Sincerely yours 
Rosan 


*The idea of a design point of view was expressed by David Sless almost two years ago 
on March 22, 2001 on this list. 

Lawson, Bryan. Parallel lines of thought. Languages of Design. 1993; 1:321-331.

Cross, Nigel. Designerly ways of knowing. Design Studies. 1982 Oct; 3(4):221-227.

Cross, Nigel. Natural Intelligence in design. Design Studies . 1999; 20:25-39.

Jones, John Chris. Designing designing. London: Architecture Design and Technology Press; 
1991.

Melican, James P. Describing User-Centered Designing:
How design teams apply user research data in creative problem solving. Chicago: 
Illinois Institute of Technology; 2000 Dec.

Sless, Email correspondence sent through the Internet discussion list – PHD-DESIGN 
(http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/phd-design/) on August 3, 2001.




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