Dear Martin,

Thanks for this comment and your question. I often use Picasso because he is an artist known to everyone, whose works is easily accessible on the web. (The post on  Unflattening by Nick Sousanis cited 19 artists in several different media.) Picasso’s etching was a useful example for the point I made.

My reply to Eduardo did *not* say that images are too ambiguous to take the lead role in a research context. It said that one must do certain things in a PhD thesis or a research report for which words are the necessary tool. 

This statement specifically focused on the issue of the PhD thesis — and, within that, the metanarrative of research. Images can play a lead role in many forms of research, and in some cases, images are more clear and less ambiguous than words or numbers. I did not to reply to Eduardo’s second, broader comments. I clarified my meaning with respect to visual images as part of a PhD thesis. This is also related to my statement that Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening is an excellent EdD thesis, while I have questions about whether it would function as a PhD thesis.

The one range of issues where words are clearly superior to visual images involves the metanarrative of research. In my view, we need words to provide:

1. An explicit statement of the research problem,
2. A discussion of knowledge in the field to date,
3. A discussion of past attempts to examine or solve the problem,
4. A discussion of the methods and approach used to solve the problem in the paper, article, or thesis at hand,
5. A methodological comparison of possible alternative methods,
6. A discussion of problems encountered in the research,
7. A discussion of how the researcher addresses those problems,
8. An explicit statement of how the research paper, article, or thesis at hand contributes to the body of knowledge within the field,
9. A discussion of implications for future research.

If someone can provide an example in which images do all this within the same document or thesis, I’d be interested to see it. In this sense, I am asking for *pictorial images* that do this, as contrasted with images that illustrate statements or images in which a thought balloon allows characters to makes these statements in words.

Images play a lead role in many areas of research where drawings, diagrams, photographs, X-rays, motion pictures, videos. models, or paintings play a central part in showing the research issues and demonstrating questions, problems, descriptions, solutions, or several of these. 

What images cannot do without words is to tell us what the researcher is thinking, what earlier researchers have known, why the researcher chose a specific method as against another method, and so on.     

Images often play a lead role in the research *narrative*. So far, I have not seen an example in which images play a successful role in the research *metanarrative*.

The case of arguments on the PhD-Design list is a different issue. The most common problem is not that people do not understand what others mean or intend by the words they use. They understand one another reasonably well and disagree. John knows what Susan means and thinks that she is wrong. Mary understands Larry but she thinks that he fails to describe the situation as it really is. X understands the definition that Y provides and thinks it is the wrong definition. This is not a case of ambiguity or misunderstanding but disagreement.  

Yours,

Ken

Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Tongji University in Cooperation with Elsevier | 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

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Martin Salisbury wrote:

—snip—

I hope to find time to respond fully to your generous contribution to this topic but a quick note regarding your reply to Eduardo. 
 
You say: 
 
"Pictorial images are ambiguous, culture-dependent, and open to entirely different interpretations that depend on the inner world of the viewer." 
 
I feel that your tendency to introduce Picasso whenever discussing visual art and research is not helpful in this context. You are putting all forms of visual art, Fine and applied, in one box. It surely cannot have escaped your notice that on this list (and elsewhere), debates conducted in word text rather than visual text generally descend quickly into argument about the meanings and definitions of words. Words can be manipulated in many ways to disguise or massage meaning. As well as focussing so strongly on your belief that images are too ambiguous to take a lead role in a research context, I think it would be useful to 'put the boot on the other foot' and give a convincing, persuasive argument for the proposition that words leave less room for ambiguity (not in 11,000 words though!). 
 
—snip—


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