Hi Kari,

Good to hear from you! Great analysis and makes good sense to extend things
that way.

I'm a practical sort of person so I find it good to extend things
holistically more close first.

This tool of epistemology can be used to open up design and design research
processes to include more and to have ways to see what is the best way
forward.

Many current approaches taught  in Design act like concrete blinkers
(heavy, can't see anything, keep everyone's heads down).

The first time I came across the epistemological approach was in  a design
research problem and design problem as a student. I'd already seen a lot of
design and it was a breath of fresh air.  It was demonstrated through a
request for a design solution

'Looking only at the physical structure of the animals, explain why rabbits
avoid being caught by foxes when foxes can run faster than them. Identify
the design of a strategy foxes can use to catch more rabbits and why it
would be successful? If you were designing an improvement to the physical
structure of the fox to improve its rabbit catching ability, what would it
be and why?

A second, rider,  design research question was 'What is the kind of design
theory that helps identify optimal solutions to this *type* of design
situation?'

The reason this is useful is that seen this way there are many similar types
of  design problems . Some examples:

1. Financial structures leading up to the global financial crisis
2. Optimising the role of Design in Business
3. Dealing with volcanoes and other natural disasters
4. Optimising usability for product competitiveness in a market with a
product mix.

Using the epistemological helps keep out of the bog of  concrete mess of
design. Epistemological approaches help  easily identify best design
solutions. They often remove much of the need for lower level design skills
as the answers at the epistemological level shape the design solution and
its details.

I'm surprised they are not more widely taught in Design schools (like
systems analysis!)

Warm regards. Hope you are enjoying the summer.

All the best,
Terry




-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kari
Kuutti
Sent: Tuesday, 27 April 2010 2:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: A new field of design research

Excellent Terry,
you get my full support for  the 'Epistemology of Design Knowledge
and Theory'! But we should not limit it to issues internal to design
research, let's aim higher - to the field of research in general.

If design research wants to be recognized as a discipline among other
it has to prove its worth, be unique in a way that is accepted by
others. There are various ways to that, and related issues have been
and are constantly discussed also within this forum. But one of the
most powerful arguments has been left almost unused, exactly as Terry
observes: epistemology.

The ideal textbook mainstream researcher has the position of an
external observer, he or she collects data without disturbing the
research subject, and neutrally manipulates it and interprets the
findings. This is of course a facade, a caricature; it has been
contested in the fringes already decades, and in practice it is
heavily violated in every laboratory worth of their salt: are
high-energy physicists really "observers" when they torture matter in
CERN? But the facade still stands, and there lies the foundation for
both quantitative and qualitative research epistemology.

Design research epistemology starts from a completely different
position: if there is something fundamental in design everybody
agrees, it is that design changes the world. Hence design research by
necessity has to cope with purposeful changing of the world as means
to provide new information, as an epistemological device.  This is a
significant difference, and definely enough to build an unique
epistemological position on. It is not a novel invention - John Dewey
made the point forcefully in his 1929 Quest for Certainty lectures -
but its implications for research are still to be worked out.

The epistemological position of design research is in fact a healthy
one: changing the world is one of the strongest, and, in the end of
the day, maybe the only way to make the world reveal connections,
mechanisms, forces that lie below the "observable surface" of
reality. At least that was what our colleagues in high-energy physics
found out eighty years or so ago when they stopped pure observing and
started  to build their first accelerators.

best regards,
--Kari Kuutti

Professor
University of Oulu, Department of Information Processing Sciences
Linnanmaa,  P.O. Box 3000, FIN-90014 UNIVERSITY OF OULU, Finland
tel. +358-8-553 1904, fax +358-8-553 1890
e-mail [log in to unmask]

>
>Date:    Mon, 26 Apr 2010 10:34:44 +0800
>From:    Terence Love <[log in to unmask]>
>Subject: A new field of design research (was: Re: Limits of
>prediction (was Re: Are visual approaches to design outdated?))
>
>Dear David,
>
>Thank you for great questions.
>
>  When I started to answer them, I realised I've been explaining things
from
>the perspective of a new field of design research,  the 'Epistemology of
>Design Knowledge and Theory'. This field of Design Research is not actually
>that new. It is more that it has been hidden or ignored. It is  found only
>in a very small number of sub-fields of Design.
>
>This 'new' field of Design research focuses on the 'Epistemology of Design
>Knowledge and Theory' and its application in design practice, design
>theory-making and design research. My previous posts since the 90s have
>pointed to this approach but I hadn't realised till now it is a missing
>field generally in Design Research, Design Practice  and Design Education.
>
>The focus of 'Epistemology of Design Knowledge and Theory'  is to look at
>the epistemological characteristics of knowledge and theory relating to
>design and by making theory using these epistemological characteristics,
>improve design practice, theory and research.
>