Hi Erik,
Thank you for your message.
What you describe can simply be seen as scholarship and research under the general field of History. The field of History already addresses all the areas of your study very well.
A key issue for any reader of your research would be to ask why it should be seen as 'design-specific' study of history rather than simply history research. That is, what is the special defining feature of what you choose and do that makes it design specific.
If there is going to be a field of 'design history' and research that claims to be the study of 'design objects' , then it seems reasonable to ask what are the defining features that differentiate 'design history' from research in History in general, and differentiate 'design objects' from other objects.
The alternative of not defining them, would seem to suggest that the field of 'design history' and the study of 'design objects' are fashionable chimera rather than robust academic topics and concepts.
Best wishes,
Terry
--
Dr Terence Love
PhD (UWA), B.A. (Hons) Engin, PGCE. FDRS, AMIMechE, MISI
Director,
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
[log in to unmask]
--
-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Elif Kocabiyik
Sent: Friday, 11 July 2014 10:18 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subject: Re: Dating methodologies in design history research
Dear All,
I am
sorry to reply to you a bit late.
Dr. Love, as
being at the beginning of the research, I could not find any literature in design history field (in a short period of time). Therefore, I was trying to broaden the research area including other disciplines and fields. Accordingly, I used ‘design objects’ and ‘artefacts’ thinking of anything made by anyone in time. Tools, ornaments, anonymous/designer objects, etc. I am more interested in how to find the date/date range/period of an object, which is more like a detective work as Prof. Boyd Davis said. I guess I’ve put it too broad in order to see different replies.
Prof. Boyd Davis, thank you very much for the article.
Dr.
Burnette, thank you for your contribution. Since I have asked too many questions in a small email, I also wonder about your opinion about a collection of objects. I mean how to deal with a lot of objects besides individual or a small group of objects. Do you think it will differ? Thank you.
Pedro, thank
you for your contribution about anthropology, and I am not trying to date the methodologies, sorry...
Prof.
Friedman, thank you for the references. I appreciate it very much.
Nic, Pedro,
Katie... Thank you for the smile :)
Sincerely,
Elif
On Friday, July 11, 2014 11:05 PM, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Dear Terry,
We’ve debated this definition of design for at least fifteen years now. I disagree with your insistence on speaking of things made from “a design.”
In my view, Herbert Simon’s definition of design works far better.
Simon (1982: 129) defines design as "[devising] courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” The assertion that designed artefacts must be made from “a design” involves a limited subset of the far larger range of designed artefacts that human beings have created to change existing situations into preferred ones.
For two and a half million years, pre-humans, early human beings, and relatively modern human beings have purposely created artefacts for specific goals. They have created artefacts from written or drawn plans for fewer than ten thousand of those two and a half million years. Before then, they worked without a written or drawn plan. I use the term “plan” for what you describe as “a design.” I use the word design as a verb to maintain conceptual clarity. Many of the artefacts designed without a drawn plan were comparable to examples of modern artefacts that are clearly and specifically planned for a purpose from ideas or mental models. These are created, amended, improved, or changed for reasons that the person who designs them can articulate and describe despite the fact that the designer has not made a plan — “a design” — from which the artefact was made.
Artefacts made without a drawn plan clearly fit Simon’s definition and mine. Without a drawn plan — “a design” — they do not meet your definition of designed artefacts. This leaves us in exactly the same endless disagreement over which we have argued for the past fifteen years.
There is not much point reviewing the argument here. I discuss these issues in three articles (Friedman 2003, 1997, 2000). These are posted to my Academia.edu page at:
https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman
You are trying to draw me into a debate on approaches that are simply different. To carry on the discussion resembles the endless religious controversies of the Thirty Years’ War. While fifteen years is only the half-way point, I think it best to stop here. You’ve stated your view, I’ve stated mine. Anyone wishes to read what I write or what you write may reach his or her own conclusion.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015
Chair Professor of Design
Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia
Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn
—
References
Friedman, Ken. 1997. “Design Science and Design Education.” In The Challenge of Complexity. Peter McGrory, ed. Helsinki: University of Art and Design Helsinki, 54-72.
Friedman, Ken. 2000. “Creating Design Knowledge: From Research into Practice.” In IDATER 2000: International Conference on Design and Technology Educational Research and Development. P. H. Roberts and E. W. L. Norman, eds. Loughborough, UK: Department of Design and Technology, Loughborough University, 5-32.
Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Theory construction in design research: criteria, approaches, and methods.” Design Studies, 24 (2003), pp. 507–522.
Simon, Hebert. 1982. The Sciences of the Artificial. 2nd Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
—
On 2014Jul11, at 20:34, Terence Love <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
—snip--
> Historically, where it gets interesting is not when or whether any sort of artefacts were produced but whether a *design* for them was made first. As far as I can see that is the a useful way of differentiating between designed objects and other objects.
—snip--
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]>
Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design
Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|