Gavin,
Perhaps "...design research is laughably irrelevant to great
practitioners..." as you state. I do not know for a fact and will let such
individuals render that judgment. For the rest of us who are not-so-great
practitioners design research is at times very relevant. A case in point:
architects and designers involved in healthcare design. Evidence-based
design has become de rigueur in many instances. No longer can the architect
or designer prescribe a design solution based on some intuitive insight.
Moreover, several large architectural firms in the US are beginning to
create in-house research positions at the level of director. The Smith Group
is one such firm. Admittedly, their research may be focused and perhaps
narrow; nevertheless, it is creating new knowledge, which is the basis for
most research.
Jacques Giard, PhD
Professor and Director
MSD/PhD Programs
Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-2105
P Please don't print this e-mail unless you really need to.
On 8/18/09 6:15 PM, "Gavin Melles" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi
> I think the point is much simpler. Design is about making and conceiving stuff
> at various scales. Most so called design research is laughably irrelevant to
> great practitioners. The same is true for great science whose practitioners
> never think about popper as they go about their nobelian pursuits. The skhole
> discourse about design and other fields keeps a tiny minority in jobs without
> really coming up with a proposal that would genuinely adress knowledge and
> practice in design. Design philosophy and research It's a little hearth in a
> little room in a mansion of design and people don't actuallly open the door
> that much.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Terence Love <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> To: Love, Terence <[log in to unmask]>
>
> Sent: 19/08/2009 11:03:57 AM
> Subject: Re: Connecting research to practice/was Who Designs?
>
> Hi Jacques,
>
> I can understand your angst.
>
> It seems people look for the benefits of design research in the wrong place.
>
> To date, it has been enormously more successful to embed the products of
> design research in the computer systems that designers use than to try to
> teach designers new advances in design knowledge.
>
> That way, design research outcomes have radically and beneficially
> transformed design practices without the effort of having to try to teach
> the new design theory developments and knowledge to either design educators
> or design practitioners.
>
> This has led naïve design professionals to think that there have been no
> useful advances through design research for practice.
>
> The reality is that design professionals now produce around 800% more work
> per day and of much higher quality. It's just that the benefits of the new
> design knowledge and the improvement in the skill that produce the improved
> design output faster reside primarily in the software rather than designers'
> personal design skills. This change has happened across all design fields.
> It is most noticeable in Graphic Design, Product Design, Engineering Design
> and Software Design.
>
> Some of this is a consequence of research funding. It is far more sensible
> to fund research that improves design outcomes automatically for all
> designers than to fund research that will improve design skills of
> individual designers provided you persuade/teach them one by one.
>
> The evidence seems to suggest that in most areas of design, computerized
> automation beats craft apprenticeship/studio teaching hands down.
>
> It would be interesting to, very specifically and with strong evidence-based
> justification, identify those areas of design practice that the above is
> not true and develop design research in those areas. I'm envisaging
> something way on the other side of 'Design as Rhetoric'/'Design as a
> systematic process'/'Design as a collaborative social process'.
>
> If this is possible, it would provide a basis for identifying completely new
> pathways in design education that are beyond being design software jockeys
> (though my feeling is that being a good design software jockey is a sound
> profession) and would help identify which areas of design education to dump
> from out of design education courses (rhetoric?).
>
> Many engineering design courses have faced this problem over the last twenty
> years in that there is now much less need for mathematical understanding in
> engineering than was previously necessary (those dratted successful design
> researchers again!). It has enabled a rethinking of what it means to be a
> professional engineering designer/manager and a radical reworking of
> engineering education.
>
> Best wishes,
> Terry
>
> ===
>
> Jacques wrote:
> I regularly need to transfer the
> theoretical and philosophical debates of my colleagues, no matter how valid
> they are, into a position that is more pragmatic and somehow connected to
> the realities of contemporary professional design practice.
>
> This conundrum, that is, the apparent disconnect between design research and
> its applicability to design practice, has been a recurring theme on this
> list.
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