Hi, Danny,

In responding to Luke's post, I limited myself to questioning two very
specific assertions. Luke wrote:

"The naturalistic undercurrents at play refer to the theory that design as
research, in its primitive vivacity, is able to escape from under the power,
violence and artifice of dry traditional scholarly research."

I put forward rhe proposition is that many forms of research are in fact
rich and naturalistic, giving authors and exemplary traditions.

I challenged the notion that what Luke labeled "traditional scholarly
research" is violent, artificial, and dry. My view is that wider and deeper
reading will reveal many rich examples of lifeful, sustaining, and warm
research.

Finally, I added the reminder that design is artificial and deals with
artifice, the sciences and politics of the artificial anchored in the
productive disciplines and arts of human making.

Responding to the rest of Luke's post required a range of careful
distinctions, unpacking and examining aspects of his argument that require
more time than I can invest at present. I'm not saying that I disagree --
nor that I agree. I say that  much of the post involves a language wrapped
around ideas and notion that require careful reflection.

The same is true of your post. If you have not yet seen an example of the
strong argument that all design is research, keep reading. Now, many
instances of this argument are not written -- that's condemned in certain
circles as "privileging the text". Instead, the argument appears at
conferences and exhibitions when designers present the outcomes of their
practice as examples of research. 

But the argument does appear, up to and including the proposal that because
we must design research inquiries and because we design research methods,
therefore all research iss a subset of design practice.

Look, I'm not going to get into the "who benefits" argument. I understand it
... that is, I understand the argument, but I don't think it is relevant to
a conversation like this. If you prefer that conversation, it's your choice,
but I take another view. I believe that most of us here have a fair degree
of regard for the rest of us, and many of us have high regard for different
views and real respect for most of our colleagues in the field and in the
places where we work. That doesn't mean we must change our views to suit
others. As it is, the way you voice your post, I'd imagine a world in which
people are trying to get rid of people and attempting to disenfranchise
colleagues from the field. Perhaps that is how it works in some places, but
not where I work. Come on, Danny. I just don't want to go there. The
vocabulary of "policing" has a tone quite foreign to my interest in these
issues.

That's it for today. I'm off for Duck Soup. Not the Marx Brothers movie. I'm
off to eat a real duck soup, followed by Beijing Duck in pancakes, and then
shredded duck with bamboo shoots. The only thing I intend to police is my
bottle of Cooper's Pale Ale. (That's the green label for those of you who
don't remember the name.)

Yours,

Ken

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:37:07 +1200, Danny Butt <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>Perhaps my turn for a "what he said" post in support of Luke's
>summary. I've read enough articles of the members of the list policing
>the difference between design and design research to want to ask the
>"cui bono" question. Who is benefiting from this distinction, who is
>benefiting from the collapse of the distinction?
>
>When Ken suggests that "Renaming design as research has not helped us
>to achieve either goal" my first thought is that I have yet to read a
>strong argument that all design is research, so I am wondering about
>straw people. Then I have to wonder: who is the "us" that has renamed
>design as research, and who is the "us" who has not achieved "our"
>goals from this renaming? It seems that there are two different ideas
>of  "us" mobilised in that sentence, and there is a hard line being
>drawn between the two camps.
>
>I guess my resistance to this line springs from an intuition that some
>"muddling" of definitions of research, design, and design research
>might be necessary to a) account for the nature of design as what
>Gunnar helpfully termed a "syncretic and integrative discipline",
>always muddled and emergent (but not lacking rigour necessarily); and
>b) to account for the very important work by designers whose implicit
>methodologies might circulate among a community of practitioners who
>are sensitised recipients for that knowledge, but as work which might
>never be able to be seen as the "visible results" that Nigel Cross
>might ask for.
>
>I'd go as far as to say that something very important in graphic
>design is its precise ability to appear uniquely visible to certain
>loosely defined audiences, while remaining background noise to others.
>Graffiti/street art is a fine example of a highly sophisticated regime
>of visual signs which may remain a mere act of vandalism for the
>unprepared viewer. There may be innovations within this domain which
>could qualify as research by nature of the specificity of their
>systematic, reflexive, and innovative interventions into an existing
>visual language ("knowledge in a field") but be difficult to recognise
>as such by other painters, typographers, or even graf artists working
>in a different style who might decide to dismiss a style as worthless.
>I am not interested in dismissing these as forms of research just
>because I may not have the visual literacy in this domain to
>understand the nature of their contribution when they have not chosen
>to represent that contribution in another format. I'd prefer to leave
>that judgement to the people who are engaged in that domain.  And
>therefore, I have to leave the question of the distinction between
>practice and practice-based research as an open question in all
>domains where I do not have the capability to make an informed
>judgement. And that means that for most areas of design practice, I
>have no wish to police the distinction.
>
>All the best,
>
>Danny
>
>--
>http://www.dannybutt.net