Hi Keith,
I think we agree, but I would put it differently.
We invent new ways of doing things. Sometimes we repeat our ways of doing things. After repeating them for a few times we articulate this way of doing things as a rule which can be applied more widely. But then we discover that the breadth of the application of the rule is limited. Also, we like to break rules or flout them, and make new rules. We also find that some rules are worth keeping, at least for a while, because they seem to work in the context we apply them. But all rules are subject to change.
The accumulated good rules that seem to work get put into Style Guides.
David
--
blog: www.communication.org.au/blog1
web: http://www.communication.org.au
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
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On 28/03/2013, at 12:51 PM, Keith Russell wrote:
> Dear David,
>
> The research BY Design is a ell agonised area on this email list. It was one of the key formative issues more than a decade ago.
>
> As a foundational issue it is likely never to go away or be resolved in a forever way.
>
> Recently I raised the carpenter's rule as an example of embodied knowledge - the Greek word for it being knowledge while the Latin being rule (and hence ruler).
>
> As embodied knowledge, the carpenter's rule indicates the stable moment in knowledge produced possibly through craft activity for craft activity. Builders came to know the uses of right angles as they came to know how to set a right angle in an object.
>
> My concern with knowledge of this sort is the direction and or directions that the knowledge, subsequent to its embodying, takes. Carpenter's don't necessarily need to come up with larger theories that might be derived from their knowledge just as poster designers don't need to formalise their knowledge beyond the next production. Knowledge then can be seen to stay at home or it can be seen to mature and take on its own journey.
>
> The conscious processes that typify research might then be seen to arise, in certain instances, as an extension of craft initiated knowledge. I am quite happy with this so long as we persist in recognising the significant difference that attends the conscious process of researching.
>
> Simply put, the mata-cognitive processes are to be looked for and recognised as significantly different. Such attention then leads to different attention etc.
>
> cheers
>
> keith
>
>
>
>
>
>>>> David Sless <[log in to unmask]> 03/28/13 11:34 AM >>>
> Tim, Welcome back!
>
> I agree with your comment:
>> Designing and researching are two quite different kinds of
>> human endeavour. They can be combined, and usefully so, but
>> doing so requires knowing how to do good designing and how to
>> do good researching, in my view.
>
> I have long been a supporter and champion of research by design, but to do so one needs to look beyond the normal sources of published research.
>
> In my own field, information design, most of the research in our field had been done BY DESIGN, and predated science as part of a long established craft tradition. The fruits of this research are to be found in Style Guides and classics such as Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style. None of these works can be developed except BY DESIGN. It's the accumulated systematic and rigorous knowledge that comes from practice.
>
> The fact that this research is ignored by many of today's academic researchers is sad, and frustrating, and can lead to designs which are dangerously unusable.
>
> I have written a few papers on this, and I'm currently writing a series of short blogs which touch on this topic as part of review of the changes in thinking that I have undergone over the last few years. My most recent is probably relevant to any design researchers who are contemplating undertaking literature reviews in their field of interest.
>
> Here are a couple of references:
> Sless, D. 2007
> Designing Philosophy
> Visible language 41.2 pp. 101-126.
>
> https://communication.org.au/blog1/
>
>
> David
> --
>
>
>
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