Dear Ken,
Yes, this is a persistent topic - my simple apprentice/journeyman/master
approach is to distinguish:
Do, show and tell.
These categories are not identical with the key research distinctions that
you correctly indicate but they are,
I find, operationally useful and also descriptively insightful.
That is, for many designers there is an agony involved in the
confrontation with academia.
Designers often know how to do something and they sometimes are able to do
it with excellence.
Some designers can show others what they do as a partial analysis of what
is going on.
Some designers can tell the world at large in a highly defined and
critically articulated way what is going on when things are designed.
This shift can also be described as the realisation of techne (way of
knowing how to do) in technology (making embedded in a formal process).
Cheers
keith
On 5/03/2015 9:35 am, "Ken Friedman" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>Most of what people do as ³research-creation² has little impact. The work
>has little value as research because it yields little that allows others
>to 1) develop the problem, 2) the method, or 3) the outcome. What most
>folks seem to want is to represent that they are doing research by
>creating something it doesnıt matter to them that no one uses it or
>builds on it.
>
>People doing ³research-creation² often make a distinction between
>³knowing that² and ³knowing how,² as though design research involves
>knowing how to do something practical rather than describing something in
>the world and generalising from it. One of the great problems in the
>field involves exactly this distinction. Designers do know how to do
>something. Showing a creative product shows us ³that² a designer knows
>³how.² Research shows us ³how.² Research shows us the ³how² of how to do
>it.
>
>Research involves 1) explaining our research problem, 2) describing our
>process, and 3) explaining our results so that others can 1) further
>develop the research problem, 2) further develop the research method, or
>3) further develop the research outcome. As a general model, explanation
>in any form of research requires the researcher to: 1) state the research
>problem, 2) discuss the knowledge in the field to date, 3) discuss past
>attempts to examine or solve the problem, 4) discuss methods and
>approach, 5) compare possible alternative methods, 6) discuss problems
>encountered in the research, and 7) explain how the researcher addresses
>those problems, 8) explicitly contribute to the body of knowledge within
>the field, and in most cases, 9) state the implications for future
>research.
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