Dear Ken and Rosan

This is very entertaining and educating.

Let me add a note from our city of Ahmedabad where we manage to do a lot of
research and design without the benefit of beer!! Ahmedabad being located in
the Western State of Gujarat is perhaps the only State in India that is
still under the State Prohibition Act, therefore no BEER!! However our
International guests need not worry since a small quota is provided to them
if they wish to apply for such a quota. We have a local joke about a dealer
in a nearby town who won the award for the highest distribution of beer in
the country, that year, and yes that town is also under the State
Prohibition Act, so much for prohibition....and beer. They must have had a
great number of International guests to account for their massive success,
however noone is counting or doing deep research!!

I agree with Ken that design, now and in the future will need to depend on
robust resarch from a whole host of disciplines that contribute to and helps
sustain good practice and offer great theory that all of us can use to make
sense of our world and the behaviour of the people in it. But I also like
the way Rosan provokes us, flipantly or otherwise, and it brings out the
best in Ken. Very educating in the end.

About pre and post design some comments. Design is on one hand a responsible
and exacting profession now differentiated into hundreds of disciplines and
capabilities that have been documented and listed earlier. So we can not
speak about design as if it is one kind of activity at all. In fact it is a
very large variety of activities, each of which could have many forms and
therefore research needs.  And on the other hand Design is a very human
activity that could be engaged in by all human beings and there is a value
in drawing the attention of policy makers to this larger role for design in
the making of a creative and sensitive society of the future. The comments
on research are to do with the former role, that of the professional. Here
too we need to look at the various circumstances and roles that a designer
can or is permitted to play within Industry, government and in society, all
of whom need design services at the highest level of quality, but many of
them may still not know it as yet.

Legitimising design is a task that all of us have been asked to play in a
science and management dominated world and the language of science and the
discipline of good management are instantly recognised. Designers have used
research for the purpose of justifying their choises and decisions as well
as for obtaining approval for their work which is usually divided into quite
distinct phases for the sake of good management. Designers have also been
using a variety of research to define a goal or direction for design action.
This is defintely pre-design , in the professional sense of what designers
are supposed to be doing. Many years ago I was steeped in Anthropology and
Ethnography research methods and readings when my friends and the not so
friendly ones thought that I was wandering far from design, the then
accepted path, of good form and good profit. This was when we had embarked
on our research on bamboo by studying the traditional uses of that material
in the remote Northeastern region of India, to document and extract what we
now call traditional wisdom, from the first hand observations and recordings
of a design survey team. Now we are able to return with new knowledge that
informs our design directions that would not have been possible without that
experience and work.

Post design research on the other hand is once again an issue of
establishing accountability for the design action and in many development
oriented situations such research sheds light on the succes or failure of
particular strategies and helps in formulating corrective actions or guides
further inputs going forward.

Research within design is needed as well and much learning is needed here
about how individual and groups of designers carry out their work in various
industries and in design situations. We have many interesting opportunities
and case (studies) in India, many which are not documented, and many more
that need to be done but are still not recognised and adequately funded. The
preoccupation seems to be on funding the setting of standards while little
effort is made to promote innovation through design. I wonder how can we
shift the emphasis from being focussed on analytic research to a form of
synthesis research that could be called designerly research in the true
sense of the word design.

With warm regards

M P Ranjan
from my office at NID
15 April 2004 at 10.30 pm IST

On Thu, 15 Apr 2004 12:46:47 +0100, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Dear Rosan,
>
>As I've said more than once, describing processes is a difficult art. If
>you meant that there is a serious and flexible phase of research activity
>that precedes a more clearly defined research process, that would have
>been a good concept. It describes what often takes place.
>
>If you meant it as a flippant way of repeating the fact that you disagree
>with the process description phrase "predesign," I accept that as your
>view and I continue to disagree with you. It is a limited view that fails
>to account for robust process. Because the concept of preresearch would
>fall within a robust process, I thought it a good concept.
>
>
>This means there is no need for a Preresearch Society of Design. The
>preresearch phase is related to the research phase. Preresearch, too,
>takes time, thought, and learning, and it is part of a rich learning
>cycle. Nevertheless, the preresearch phase -- if that's what you want to
>label it -- falls within the larger range of activities.
>
>That larger range of activities is well covered by the existing design
>research societies.

SNIP SNIP


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Prof. M P Ranjan
Faculty of Design
and
Head, NID Centre for Bamboo Initiatives
and
Faculty Member on the Governing Council
National Institute of Design
Paldi
Ahmedabad 380007
INDIA

Email: <[log in to unmask]>
Fax: 91+79+26605242
Home: 91+79+26610054
Work: 91+79+26639695 ext 1090
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