Hi Tim,

Thanks for your message. Hope you are enjoying your break. Pyrenees sounds wonderful!

I think I'm not so different from your position on the need to sharpen up the terms and basic concepts side of design research. We tackle it in different ways. Over the last few years, I've checked out most of the epistemological possibilities for building a coherent design theory model on the main options such as undividual designers, design as a social process, design process, designed objects, proptertise of designed objects, design contexts,  - lookig at these form both quantitative and qualitative perspectives and from positivist/rationalist and a variety of post positivist persepectives. 

So far I've come to the conclusion that the only really strong option is to base design theory on a picture of designing as a deep internal human process at the level of thinking, emotions, feeling or self-consciousness (based on them but distinct from them). There are a number of ways of going at this but the most straightforward is a mix of straight affective cognition theory set against a backdrop of recent findings from cognitive neuroscience particularly relating to chemical, neurological, structural and evolutionary underpinnings of internal human activities. 

In this, I'm also strongly including that designing is strongly shaped by contexts such as social and cultural situational factors and the embedded cultural cues in styled arefacts such as products, services, systems, orgnisations and policies. These are significant and necessary aspects of researching and understanding how designing is undertaken and inproving the efficiency and effectiveness of design activities.

I'm suggesting, however,  that establsing a basis for design theory by first focusing on the internal individual human biological processes as emerging from new research in cognitive neuroscience allows the more ready inclusion of the above qualitatative socio-cultural issues in a coherent and epistemologically justifiable manner in ways that the reverse does not.

Its from this perspective that I wrote about information. The ways that individuals internally manage information, data and knowledge are essentially identical. The separation of the three in the literature is a means of classifying stuff for other purposes. Practically, for the purposes of understanding the detail of how designers design as distict from how they think or emote or feel there is little difference between information, data and knowledge. An interesting paper on this is Piggott and Hobbs (2001) "The Noetic Prism" available http://wawisr01.uwa.edu.au/2001/PigottHobbs.pdf

from the above perspective,s both design_methods_1 and design_methods_2 are information gathering methods - getting informed about best process is essentially similar to getting informed about technical attribute. The library searching methods are also logically part of the class of design methods where 'design methods' refers to methods designers use. This is the common position but one I think is not so useful because of its breadth.

With regard to the separation of the terms 'design ' and 'designing', I agree but have for the moment been persuaded by Ken Friedman's elegant argument that it is often better to use the verb form 'design' rather than the gerund 'designing'.

Overall, the core of this it seems is to get clarity on the main concept and terminology issues to build some consistent and coherent  foundation theory and concepts - sorting the finer detail is a job for later. A significant problem is that much of the literature has focused on how much it is possible to include in the meaning of a single term across the widest range of circumstances and that leads to the problems such as  'all is designing' - the problem referred to by Susan.

I too don't see any easy change routes to clarify terminology. Others however have been here before and Physics, Engineering, the Social Sciences and Psychology have all had similar problems with key terms. Drawing on the experience of these other disciplines indicates that establsihing technical (as distinct from everyday) definitions seems to be the most effective way forward.

Best wishes,

Terry

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Dr. Terence Love
Dept of Design
Curtin University
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