(This version with correct url)
Dear MP,
You write beautifully when you ask where ideas come from and reply that they come from "deep immersion in reality with our senses wide open seeking, not just eyes wide open, I include here the mind, body and soul, all are in play here, and the seeking is for a variety of possible directions that lead to several alternate resource maps being processed into numerous compositions that set the stage for ideas to emerge from these juxtapositions of real sense data"
It’s a great starting point. There are three questions that follow in terms of using that idea for designers and design researchers:
1. How does the idea production process happen and what can we learn from understanding it?
2. Because science and mathematical modelling are part of our human experience of the world, how do we include them in understanding where ideas come from?
3. How does the concept of creating ideas fit with knowledge about how bodies function biologically whilst creating new ideas or solving problems?
Happily, the answers to 3. help give the answers to all.
Put simply, the biological evidence indicates that our internal biological bodily processes in creating ideas comprise a reflexive dynamic inter-relationship between slight changes to the physiology of our bodies; our perception of those changes (often called emotions or feelings); and our thoughts, and the ideas and images in our heads. This can trivially be extended to our acts of doing like, drawing, painting, craft and playing trombone.
As far as I know at this time, the first useful explanation of this reflexive dynamic interdependency between bodily changes, emotions/feelings, and thoughts that linked this process to the biological evidence was in Bastick, T. (1982) 'Intuition: How we think and act', John Wiley & Sons. If I remember right that was also the first text to review more than a million documents, and in those days by hand! Following Bastick, Antonio Damasio presented an array of evidence in his books from the 1990s onwards that provided more detail of the process. In 2003, Bastick refined his earlier analyses to include the newer biological understanding in 'Intuition: Evaluating the construct and its impact on creative thinking' Kingston: Stoneman & Lang.
If you want a short easy-to-read version, I described the above process in 2000 in Love, T. (2000). Computerising Affective Design Cognition. International Journal of Design Computing, 2. available at
http://www.love.com.au/docs/2000/CADC.pdf and also in Love, T. (2001). Concepts and Affects in Computational and Cognitive Models of Designing. In J. S. Gero, M. L. Maher (Eds.), Computational and Cognitive Models of Creative Design (pp. 3-23). Sydney: University of Sydney available at http://www.love.com.au/docs/2001/CACCMD01.pdf as well as several of my more recent papers at http://www.love.com.au/docs/publications.htm . (My apologies for the quality of the online versions. All are pre-prints and Ken has been reminding me to clean the formatting and convert them to pdf. Hopefully I will manage these two soon. )
Conclusions:
By taking into account the biological understanding of how we create ideas, it becomes clear that it is all and everything of our experience and learning and knowledge provides the basis for the ideas we produce and the breadth, usefulness of beauty of those ideas. This all and everything also includes science and mathematical modelling as well as past evidence, memories and learning.
Put simply, learning and knowledge from science and mathematical modelling and analyses ADD to the learning and knowledge we gain from direct perceptual experience.
The more complicated version is that science and mathematical modelling ADD much more than they might be expected and typically can extend the basis for creating ideas many orders beyond what can be achieved through direct perception of experience.
Best wishes ,
Terry
---
Dr Terence Love
PhD(UWA), BA(Hons) Engin. PGCEd, FDRS, AMIMechE, PMACM, MISI
Honorary Fellow
IEED, Management School
Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566
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
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of M P Ranjan
Sent: Wednesday, 5 November 2014 1:20 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Cc: M P Ranjan; Paul Mike Zender
Subject: Re: Evidence-Based Practice in a Changing World Economy
Dear Paul Mike Zender
Yes, knowledge is not much use in design in its early stages, it is insights that truly matter, and those who have been steeped in science beliefs through indoctrination are going to be quite week kneed when it dawns on them that this is indeed the case.
I do not dismiss science, but it is useful for justification, but it does not contribute to finding the right direction for and unknown or even unknowable kind of situation which is the characteristic of all wicked problems in design.
You make me sound like some strange "fakir" dancing around a fire in search of strange illicit ideas! Perhaps you should read Jon Kolko on design synthesis, indeed The Magic of Design is the title of one of his books. Kolko is a young researcher who seems to have got it right. Check out his teachings at the Austin Centre for Design which for me places him at the very top of the list of schools which show some understanding of design and its processes, way ahead of many well known universities steeped in science knowledge and hundreds of years of experience.
Where do ideas come from? Certainly not from a laboratory in the case of design situations. It comes from deep immersion in reality with our senses wide open seeking, not just eyes wide open, I include here the mind, body and soul, all are in play here, and the seeking is for a variety of possible directions that lead to several alternate resource maps being processed into numerous compositions that set the stage for ideas to emerge from these juxtapositions of real sense data that is as yet un-apprehended by all of science, since that is still in the future. See my model of mind body map on my academia.edu web archive.
Does this make your knees week? Many of my students with great accomplishments from engineering and technology schools do have this week knee moments when they realise that their 25 years of science biased education does not help them in complex design situations with systems complexity and human intentions in conflict with other stake holders. This goes well beyond market driven design opportunities that industry and business would like to use.
My conviction in this matter is quite deep but if you have evidence that shows an alternate reality of design, I am all ears. Design that I understand is about shaping the future which is as yet unknown and indeed unknowable by the use of science. We can speculate about the future but design gives us a handle to shape it and make choices as we explore potential compositions. Human use of fire about 2 million years ago was not a response to some scientific understanding. It was a leap of faith that provided security against other beings, fire as security was indeed, designed.
With warm regards
M P Ranjan
from my iPad at home
4 November 2014 at 10.45 pm IST
Prof M P Ranjan
Independent Academic, Ahmedabad
Adjunct Professor (Design) Ahmedabad University Author of blog : http://www.designforindia.com Archive of papers : http://cept.academia.edu/RanjanMP Sent from my iPad
> On 04-Nov-2014, at 8:17 pm, Paul Mike Zender <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Luke and thread participants:
>
> Thank your for this topic and your thoughtful translation of evidence based medicine into a design context.
> Like Ken and several others, and unlike Birger, I see many parallels between design and medicine (solving problems, meeting human need/user centered). To Birger, medicine was also afloat on a sea of uncertainty once, think bleeding people and applying leaches, but thankfully less so today.
>
> My experience is that design is ahead of medicine in user-centered research methods and practices. My experience is that design is woefully behind medicine in evaluation and knowledge built on evaluation. I don’t think your translation of medical definition caught this. This may be because medicine is so far ahead of design in developing knowledge to guide practice that in medical definition this got just a few words ”clinically relevant research, often from the basic sciences of medicine.” Medicine has a whole basic sciences foundation! It has developed many, many specific and proven measures by which to judge practice: blood pressure, blood sugar, 02 level, electrolyte balance, on and on it goes.
>
> Design has so little guiding knowledge for practice.
>
> It’s possible design has little guiding knowledge because design has few evaluative tools and methods to measure the effectiveness of what we design. As design moves from objects to programs, systems, and services we in design have even fewer methods and tools for evaluation. David asked for examples, this year I had a health program design project in Togo with a nice sized trial (4,000+ subjects) go partially inconclusive because of flaws in the study protocol (the control group teachers were also trained in the hygiene curriculum). This is an innovative program to help life and culture per Klaus' vision. While there is more to design than seeking evidence, evidence has a proven habit of building knowledge to guide more effective practice. My experience taught me that evidence gets harder to obtain the more you try to change systems, cultures, and societies. That doesn't make evidence less critical unless you are indifferent to the outcome of your social or cultural redesign.
>
> A biomedical informatics colleague of mine, Dr. John Pestian - top in his field and creator/designer of a very innovative and effective system for diagnosing suicide - once said, “Truth and facts are stubborn things.” If your response is ‘whose truth and what facts’ then you won’t seek evidence-based design innovation.
>
> Those arguing against science seem to me to be in danger of arguing against knowledge. In response to M P, from where do ideas for innovation come? Are you proposing a revelation-based epistemology where ideas pop into your head as an alternative to an experience based one where the ideas come from past experience?
>
> We should not give up seeking evidence before we even start gathering it.
>
> Best…
>
> Mike Zender
>
> stone cutter and cathedral designer
> University of Cincinnati
> School of Design
>
>
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