First, thanks Richard for proposing this discussion, and Ken, for inviting 
those of us who are "newly minted" to join it.

Ken asks:
1) What research topics are you pursuing?
2) What kinds of methods are you using?

Richard asks:
Are there only a few broad directions of inquiry that students are pursuing 
at this time?
I know that individual projects are exceptionally diverse, but are there 
certain themes or theoretical positions that these projects represent?


1) What research topics are you pursuing?

I study the way text and visual information work together to convey 
messages. I began because I was curious about the topic, and the literature 
didn't satisfy my curiosity. I continue because the evidence of my research 
has caused me to believe that visual/verbal meaning collaboration might 
improve exposition and argument in two ways. First, visual/verbal 
collaboration might be better than textual enhancement as a way to improve 
learning outcomes (Textual enhancement considers images as supplementary 
information to help explain the primary text. I propose a collaboration of 
equal modalities, which affects invention and composition in that arena.). 
Second, I hypothesize that certain arguments, those dealing with what 
Petrie and Oshlag (1993) call radically new knowledge might also be better 
dealt with using visual/verbal collaboration. Radically new knowledge is 
knowledge that goes against established thinking. Visual/Verbal 
collaboration might be a better way to convey certain arguments dealing 
with the radically new, because it provides a combination of concrete and 
syntactically directed experience (dealing with seemingly abstract ideas 
like the one I will mention later) that constrains slippage. For a variety 
or reasons that my dissertation addresses, visual/verbal metaphor might 
limit the slippage between theorist intent and audience interpretation more 
effectively than verbal information alone (I believe that visual/verbal 
interactions can also be used to explore slippage, but that issue is 
outside of my scope at the moment.)
?.
2) What kinds of methods are you using?

I followed a two-part methodology. First, I collected and analyzed data in 
order to identify types of visual/verbal meaning collaboration. I found six 
types. I then analyzed those types in order to identify their compositional 
elements and the ways that the types were used as rhetorical strategies. 
Unlike the work of Barthes and Bonsiepe, I stayed away from advertising 
examples, concentrating instead on examples of exposition and argument that 
did not contain a call to buy anything. I went in that direction, I 
suppose, because I stand on pragmatic ground. For better or worse, I am a 
maker of things. And I like those things to be arguments for “the good 
man.” I was interested in identifying those arguments.

The second stage of my work involved a case study, of my own process, 
concerning how the designer invents and composes what I call Redefining 
Interplay. Redefining Interplay addresses arguments dealing with the 
radically new. In this case, the radically new dealt with an approach to 
the concept of textual voice that goes against established thinking. 
Textual voice is a metaphor with very slippery interpretations. The 
theorist concerning this concept, David Kaufer, the head of the English 
Department here at CMU, proposes a framework that addresses those slippery 
interpretations and proposes a much more directed perspective.

I found that at least some of the principles of invention and composition 
concerning Redefining Interplay could be generalized using this inductive 
method.

I am influenced by the work of Aristotle, so I focused on invention in the 
commonplaces as arenas for thought that provide constraints and 
opportunities for invention (Consigny, 1974). I also looked at elements of 
composition. What would be communicated visually, what would be 
communicated verbally, and how does the designer develop visual/verbal 
composition? What is the process of making? The case study gave me a 
different take on the issue than the gathering of examples had produced. 
Finally, I relied on the Petrie and Oshlag's work on metaphor to provide 
some of my design rationale for conveying the radically new.

Again, I would say that my pragmatic point of view drove the case study. 
But it was also a dialectical exercise in that I, of course consulted with 
my committee at every stage in the process in order to discover what I 
would think of as first principles of visual/verbal collaboration.

?.
3) Richard asks: “Are there only a few broad directions of inquiry that 
students are pursuing at this time? I know that individual projects are 
exceptionally diverse, but are there certain themes or theoretical 
positions that these projects represent?”

As a recent student, I have an interest as much in the evolution of my 
direction as I do with the direction that finally emerged. I am also 
intrigued that my doctoral work was allowed to evolve somewhat organically.

I began with a curiosity, a felt difficulty, about visual/verbal 
communication, how it is that we compose cross-modal forms and how those 
forms communicate differently than image or text alone. I could not find 
satisfying answers to those questions in the literature. At that point, I 
did not even realize that I wanted a Ph.D. In fact, I will never forget the 
conversation I had with Richard Buchanan. He was the person responsible for 
helping me see that doctoral work was the only way that I would be able to 
have the time to begin to better understand the problem I wanted to 
address, and to then address that problem.

In rereading these posts, what I notice as a theme might seem too obvious 
to mention, but I want to bring it out nonetheless. Perhaps it is my newly 
minted perspective that drives my need to do this. I see the researcher’s 
theme, one that combines content knowledge with an insatiable curiosity 
about a problem, which has not been addressed by the literature, as the 
core theme that I've known students to sometimes miss seeing explicitly.

That insatiable curiousity about an unanswered problem is a theme I saw 
throughout the posts; with many of us sure that our perspective was at the 
center of design research. What I think makes our big tent group so hard to 
hold together is two-fold. First, we have an array of content knowledge; 
much of it directed toward what I would argue is the pragmatic theme of 
optimizing. But we also have the dialectic theme of using discourse to 
discover our assumptions concerning the first principles of design "writ 
large." How do we develop similar content knowledge, and should we develop 
similar content knowledge so that we can address design writ large? It is 
the content knowledge, in architecture, in communication design, in 
industrial design, and in the design of systems, coupled with the belief in 
the importance of a problem, that allows us to see and address what 
cognitive psychologists, for example, can't imagine. But, I believe, that 
diverse content knowledge can also make it hard for us to speak to each 
other from time to time.

While I don't believe all of us to be pragmatists, I do believe that 
particular point of view informs a lot of assumptive worlds within this 
group. I wonder if design might have some parallels to rhetoric, In 
rhetoric many of us are also concerned with pragmatic issues, but some of 
us, I'm thinking of the linguists in particular, have a curiousity which 
leads to the elegant identification and naming of the elements of discourse 
at particular moments in time, as well as the changes in those elements 
over time, without a concern for the practical. Both are elegant, both are 
useful, but it can be difficult from time to time for a pragmatist like me 
to “get” it.

Thanks again for the opportunity to contribute. As a post doc on the job 
market, you've given me the chance to reflect on ideas that might come up 
again in an interview.

Best,

Susan

References:

Aristotle. (1991). On rhetoric: A theory of civic discourse (G. A. Kennedy, 
Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.

Barthes, R. (1964/1977). Rhetoric of the image (S. Heath, Trans.). In 
Image, music, text (pp. 32-51). New York: Hill and Wang.

Bonsiepe, G. (1965). Visual/Verbal rhetoric. Ulm, 14/15/16, 22-40.
Consigny, S. (1974). Rhetoric and its situations. Philosophy and Rhetoric,
7(3), 175-186.

Petrie, H. G., & Oshlag, R. S. (1993). Metaphor and learning. In A. Ortony 
(Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 579-609). New York: Cambridge University 
Press.








:::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Susan M. Hagan, Ph.D., MDes.
Postdoctoral Fellow
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA 15213

v. 412.268.2072
f. 412.268.7989