Dear Don,

Thanks. I agree. Much significant research involves issues on which we don’t know much except for the fact that we don’t know much — and this includes issues on which we hardly know anything. 

A great deal of responsible normal science involves issues on which we know a great deal. So does a lot of trivial research. In contrast, important questions often require years of work. It took Kepler several decades of observation, work, and false starts to develop his laws of planetary motion. The fact that physics builds on relatively secure information means that physics has moved forward in successive development cycles ever since Kepler, Copernicus, and Galileo — until physics didn’t work, and then it was a struggle to build up to Einstein, Bohr, and Poincaré. Now we are reaching new impasses.

In the social and behavioural sciences, and in applied social sciences such as management or design, we face similar problems. Much of the time, I find myself working on problems with a profound sense of ignorance — making observations, gathering data, trying to get to something reasonable. There is one specific question that I have struggled with since the late 1960s, and I continue to flounder about rather like someone trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. I made significant progress in the 1980s, but the answers were so depressing that I had to put it aside for a while. By the time I got back to the issue, some hypotheses on which I predicted future developments in the topic proved to be good, but as a result, so many aspects of the problem had developed and changed that I once again know hardly anything. The unexpected consequences of predictable changes interacting with a larger world made an immense difference. 

Evolving human communities change even as we study them. Most socio-technical systems and all complex adaptive systems adapt to the world, changing it and being changed on a regular and often swift basis. 

Our ignorance is compounded by the transformative nature of what we study.

One issue in your post involves such a crucial range of knowledge, information, and skill that you understated its importance. A sense of method, and understanding of comparative research methodology, and a foundation in several areas of science and technology gives you the basis for understanding when you “hit upon a useful framework and approach.”

You have a way to evaluate these, apply them, and determine which frameworks work reasonably and which don’t. You understand the difference between type 1 errors (false positive findings) and type 2 errors (false negative findings); while anyone can make mistakes, understanding that these two kinds of mistakes exist leads us to check most things in several different ways. This is quite different than simply accepting that something works because it seems to work, or presenting something that seems to work as an effective research finding.

Your post implies a world of experience and expertise on these issues and others. This is the expertise that I describe as mastery.

The most important question in research is not whether we are ignorant when we begin. Most of us are ignorant to some degree — and pioneers in new fields are truly ignorant because they are going into areas where little or no work precedes their own. 

What counts is whether we know something reasonable when we finish, and whether we know it well enough to explain to others what we found in a way that enables them to use what we learn, find, develop, or discover, in their own work.

Yours,       

Ken

p.s. Because your post raises important issues in the context of several quoted passages, I am reposting it in full below this note. 

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 | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/

Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia

--

Don Norman wrote:

—snip—

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 3:35 AM, Ken Friedman <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> ​...
> many people lacking requisite skills attempt using design methods to solve
> wicked problems and problems in third-order and fourth-order design. The
> problem is that they don’t know how to frame the questions they pose. They
> lack responsible methods for identifying problems and moving toward
> solutions. As a result, they fail to generate appropriate solutions.

this is not necessarily a bad thing. I just spent two hours with
the Chief Experience Officer and his team of the University
of California San Diego's Health system. This is a $1
billion/year enterprise.

We all agreed to tackle the problem of enhancing the practice of medicine.
We all agreed that we would use design methods. And we all agreed that we
didn't know​

​(now to quote Ken):
how to frame the questions
​ ...
proceed
(and that we)
 lack responsible methods for identifying problems and moving toward
solutions.​

​So why are we proceeding?  because we don't think anyone else knows
either. The critical thing is that we know what we don't know, which is
what distinguishes us from the group Ken was talking about.

We have no choice but to proceed, to learn how to frame the questions, to
develop responsible methods.

This is a DesignX problem, worthy of study.

Don

(In my long history of research, i have never studied anything i
understood.  I always pick problems about which I am clueless and stumble
around for a few years until I hit upon a useful framework and approach.
Then i write a book about it and move on to the next area about which i
know nothing. I am always uncomfortable when i work in an area i think I
understand. Real progress comes through working in areas that are not yet
understood)

—snip—


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