Chuck,

This is a rude and superficial answer. You have deliberately – and sarcastically – misrepresented my comments.

You asked for feedback. I gave it.

The Google Scholar search is a reasonable heuristic – I stated explicitly that for a proper search, one goes to a reasonable reference library for a proper search. Nevertheless, an increasing number of researchers are using Google Scholar for many purposes – sometimes in preference to Web of Knowledge or Scopus. I do not, and if I were doing a full search, I’d spend several days using the digital resources of a university library. (Someone wrote me off-list to query me about search techniques and literature review. I will post a note on this in a few days.)

Even though I have not done a full search or review of the literature on “Intuition, Imagination and Insight in Design Thinking,” it should be clear from the specific examples I cited that there is a significant literature on these issues that you simply did not search.

The comment that these notes were “glibly informative” is uncalled for. If you’d have read carefully, you would find that the feedback you requested – even the example-only sources – would fill in missing gaps in the structure of your paper.

Despite your suggestion, I will not welcome queries because I do not represent myself as having “compiled exhaustive knowledge of the subjects involved.” If you had done any kind of depth search, however, you would find – as I wrote – that among the many hits on Google Scholar, there are useful links. If you search while linked to a university library, these will take you to a significant number of peer-reviewed journal publications across the fields I mentioned.

I sampled the literature to ensure that my comments were valid. That’s why it took me a week to respond – you posted your essay and your request for feedback on Tuesday, June 18. I replied on Monday, June 24. I spend the time between then and today sampling, reading, writing, and thinking. The samples suggest to me that there are at least several hundred useful and valid items on which you could have drawn in writing your essay. Despite your sarcasm, the items to which I refer are not drawn at random from Google Scholar as though a search engine wrote them. These are drawn from the underlying sources that Google Scholar search algorithms identified and located in my searches. I then sampled the hits and went to the sources to see what might be useful and what might not. All this was clear in my note. The sixteen examples in my post apply directly to the issues you raise.

Sampling is a valid research technique in exploratory research. Despite your intended sarcasm, I did indeed research the issue, sample the literature, and I have indeed “determined [it] to be scientifically valid and practically useful.”

As I wrote, not all those hundreds of thousands of hits are valid or useful. They are a top-level heuristic. I also wrote that you’ve got to dig down and read.

There is a literature here dating back at least to the work of psychologist William James in the 1890s. Simon, Polanyi, Nonaka, Takeuchi, Von Krogh, Collins, Stolterman, Warr, and dozens more have written on the processes involved in “Intuition, Imagination and Insight in Design Thinking.” In some cases, they address design thinking specifically, in other cases, they address the same processes of professional judgment, planning, and action in such fields of practice as informatics, computing, medicine, management, finance, nursing, law, engineering, and architecture. I know this literature from the work that I did in knowledge management and organization theory in the 1990s, but I am no longer expert. I simply questioned the claim that “Significant subconscious processes in purposeful thought and design thinking and their systematic relationships have not been theoretically defined. As a consequence, there is no basis for scientific discrimination or practical assessment of hidden thinking where goals are broader than identifying and locating such events.”

My reply requested that you clarify what aspect of this has not been subject to previous work. You have not done this. Instead, you wrote a sarcastic personal attack.

You posted an announcement to a research list on Monday June 18. I spent a week reading on your topic to make sure that my response was reasonable, and that there is, indeed, a scientifically valid and practically useful literature. Despite the revision to your paragraph, I’d say that you have not yet identified a gap in the literature. The place to begin is what you state in the revised opening but do not do in the essay: “synthesizing and applying prior research regarding purposeful thought and design thinking in many fields.”

That’s what I suggest needs to be done.

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design>    Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman

Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China

Chuck Burnette wrote:

—snip—

Thanks Ken. Very helpful and glibly informative. The opening statement will now read: “Significant subconscious processes in purposeful thought have not been defined in a practically useful theory that could be readily learned and applied by individuals, collaborating groups, or organizations and that could serve as a scaffolding for organizing, analyzing, synthesizing and applying prior research regarding purposeful thought and design thinking in many fields. The purpose of this paper is to suggest definitions that fit A Model of Design Thinking as a basis for evaluating the validity of the theory and its potential to afford such a scaffolding”

For all other questions please refer to Ken Friedman who has compiled exhaustive knowledge of the subjects involved gained through Google lists and other sources he has researched and determined to be scientifically valid and practically useful. Ken clearly could, if he chose, identify a practical theory and scaffolding that is fully supported by research and tested in practice.

—snip—



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