Dear All,

In a thread that focuses on the issue of research training, Klaus
Krippendorff and Jacques Giard wrote elegant notes on two crucial
issues. Klaus wrote on what it is that research entails, and Jacques
explained the need for appropriate training. I’ve copied their notes
below. Klaus and Jacques explained their views with clarity, and I agree
with all they’ve said. What follows are additional thoughts.

As Klaus notes, research provides information that others can use,
applying it to their work. Klaus also explains why we must write up our
research. We write research to communicate it in a way that allows
others to understand and apply it.

No artifact explains itself. No research process explains itself. Thus
we require the meta-arrive of research. The meta-narrative of research
explains the thought and action that took us from an initial question,
puzzle, or problem, to the final published result.

These elements of the meta-narrative generally require us to:

1. State the research problem, or the issue at the heart of our
inquiry,
2. Discuss knowledge in the field to date, 
3. Discuss past attempts to examine or solve the problem, 
4. Discuss our research methods and approach, 
5. Compare possible alternative research methods, 
6. Discuss the problems we encountered in our research, 
7. Explain how we addressed those problems, 
8. Explicitly contribute to the body of knowledge within the field, 
9. State implications for future research. 

The steps in the recipe vary according to need. That is the case of any
practice, from surgery or law to baking biscuits and brewing beer.
Publishing our work is the difference between research that we share
with others and study that we undertake for ourselves.

Is it possible to communicate research with publishing it? Yes. We
often communicate research in the specific research context, or in a
seminar, or at a conference and we don’t always publish it to do so.
We also communicate research using recording devices such as audiotape,
videotape, DVD, or the web.

Is it possible to communicate research without using words? No.

And there is more. Writing and describing research has a value to the
researcher different to the value of communicating. Robert Amsler (2007:
unpaged) describes it:

“You can often DO something immediately following a prior action, but
you often cannot SAY something following a previous statement without
setting the background for its understanding. I suppose the missing
component is that when writing you understand that you cannot assume the
reader had your same state of mind, whereas as the actor DOING things,
you knew your state of mind.” 

The meta-narrative of research requires us to examine, challenge, and
weigh our own work and the processes that we use in doing the work. 

The process is never perfect, but it is always a step in the right
direction.

And that leads to Jacques Giard’s point. It is nearly impossible to
engage in research without appropriate training. 

Every field occasionally produces occasional untrained research
geniuses. In mathematics, the great Srinivasa Ramanujan is a case in
point. Starting with a textbook half a century out of date, he taught
himself mathematics, developing a wide range of important results. But
many of these results were already known – important when they were
first discovered. Ramanujan’s was renowned both for the profound depth
of his intellect and the limitations of his knowledge.

It seems to me unlikely that we will not see a Ramanujan in design
research any time soon. There are several reasons. First, there are few
examples of profound truth claims that one can make in design without
knowledge of prior developments. Second, design is not a likely field
for demonstrating the kinds of deductive claims that one can make in
mathematics or physics from widely agreed principles or axioms. Third,
much of the most advanced work in design requires working in a design
context with a team of researchers and practitioners.

To imagine a designerly Ramanujan is like imagining a naïe sociologist
who has never read Weber, Simmel, Mead, or Blumer. Or it might be like a
folk engineer with no concept of mechanical production: able to design a
cargo cult airplane in bamboo, but unable to design airplane parts for
manufacture.

The folk engineering approach to research gives us what we often see in
art and design: who know little or nothing about research transmitting
incorrect information and poor skills to those who know less than they
do. And that brings us back to Don Norman’s (2010), “Why Design
Education Must Change.”

Yours,

Ken

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References

Amsler Robert. 2007. “Subject: RE: 20.391 Feynman’s version of
Kelvin’s declaration.” Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 20, No. 392.
London: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London.
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2007, Subject: 20.392 making, saying, understanding.
Archived at: www.princeton.edu/humanist/

Norman, Don. 2010. “Why design education must change.” PhD-Design
Discussion List. JISCMAIL. Tue, 23 Nov 2010 15:45:23 -0800. URL:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=PHD-DESIGN

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Klaus Krippendorff wrote:

i have been lurking on this discussion. as i see it, it has deviated
far from the original question, which is fine with me, and focused on
(1) the use of the word research, largely (2) to describe an individual
activity, rather than what that activity contributes to others.

to me the latter is important.

thinking things through a problem when designing, or reflecting on
one’s practices, even trying things out in the process of making
design decisions is a highly personal activity and everyone’s own
business. as a matter of personal preference, i think this is good
practice, however, it is not research.

to me the results of research must be communicable so that others
interested in them can follow the steps taken to come to the proposed
conclusion, even replicate these steps, or critically evaluate whether
all necessary precautions were considered to come to the results. no
evaluation of research process can be undertaken unless the researcher
provides the data from which the research took off and the methods used
to transform them into a result.

from that perspective, it does not matter whether the result is a
material artifact or a proposition claimed to have truth value. even if
the result is a design, to satisfy the requirement of communicability, a
research report cannot bypass the requirement of using a medium, e.g.,
writing. a resulting artifact may prove its worth in various settings,
but success stories do not reveal the methods used to get to it.

i am suggesting, to benefit a profession, the communicability of the
research process should not stop at the ability to follow the steps
taken towards a result, but also be usable in other situations, be
generalizable to other projects. as such, a work of art fails on both
accounts but should not be blamed for it.

in view of research undertaken in other disciplines, especially in
disciplines that designers need to work with, the casual use of the word
research does not enhance the reputation of the design profession

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Jacques Giard wrote:

What concerns me more, however, are students declaring that their
research provided evidence for one direction or other in the project,
but then not being able to provide an adequate answer when asked about
the methodology for the research, the findings, the conclusions or
anything else that we tend to associate with a research exercise, no
matter how minor. It is these cases that concern me because some of
these students assume that they have not only undertaken research but
also understand the process. A few professors fall into this category as
well.

By the way, these are often the same people who become upset when
non-designers dare to design. How can these people design, they will
tell you, without adequate training? Same thing for research.