DDR4: Designing Design Research Conference: 20 March 2004QUESTION SESSION SUMMING UP BY PROFESSOR RICHARD BUCHANAN,
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Transcribed from audio by AR and designed to keep the mood of the occasion.)
Alec Robertson, DDR4 Originator and Co-convenor.
I would like to hand over to Richard Buchanan now, who has a role really to try and sum up the key points and perhaps the sentiments of Conference. We have discussed about the past. We have discussed about the present. But where are we going? Is there a nugget that he can add to the day.?
Professor Richard Buchanan
Thank you Alec. I appreciate the opportunity to make some comments back.
I am going to follow John Chris’ (Jones) comment earlier about the need for integration. I must say I think you are right that we integrate within ourselves. So I am going to present how I am integrating this conversation we are having. And it may not be the way you integrate it, but I hope that if you watch how I do it, it might make some sense to you and something positive – a contribution .
I want to begin by saying I was startled, if not shocked, by the failure of the Panel to address Leif’s question well (on research and aesthetics). I believe it is a very powerful and important question. I think Alec, and others recognised that there is something deep there. But gosh….. the difficulty of copying with that, surprised me from such a group as this.
(AR Panel Chair Note: The Question was the last one that could be fit in due to strict adherence to the schedule and discussion had to be shortened. The facility for post-script comments by both Panellists and the audience participants will be available in due course.)
I will begin with a comment of the first session, not the first comment. The comment from the man at the back , I am sorry I don’t remember your name , but the comment on Art. I think that is the beginning and the end of today’s meeting.
The first comment you made was that your concern, as an artist, is with self-expression and bringing meaning into the world. And I must say that for me that is far removed from design, and perhaps we would agree as we talked earlier about this.
To me design is about serving people - the very humble and modest matter. And I think that there is great caution in how we bring our own egos forward to think that we can shape the world. But I think that is the beginning point of the conversation - the relation of design and art -at least Fine Art.
I think our conversation in the first session tended to stir more the kinds of positions that we have …beginning with that notion - the notion of education, particularly the relation of research and practice.
The historical issue for the RCA and for the Design Research Society really is how design research emerged out of our experience with art and design practice.
But I think that in the early session we were bringing up connections and issues.
And I think we spent a lot of time on that relation between practice and research… and I think that didn’t resolve anything for us . I expressed my own frustration that this issue keeps coming up for us because we have models elsewhere. And if we spend a little time studying other fields we would see how they too have struggled with this. We are rather late it this process of connecting professional practice with the reasons for deeper understanding. But there may be a model that we could think about here. Again the stirring up of the first session prompted this in my mind.
We should bear I mind three kinds of research - that is…. the scope.
We should look at clinical research, …(and that sounds like a funny word in the design community, but I heard a number of individual cases being talked about). …. that individual case is what I call ‘clinical research’ . And I think I was hearing traces of our own personal experiences with issues.
The second is called applied research. Applied research is when you deal with several cases that share a common theme. In other words, if you are concerned with the construction of a particular bridge, that is case of clinical research. But if you are looking at how you would construct bridges generally or bridges of a certain sort, that is applied research. That is the scope… that changes.
There is a third – basic research – investigation of causes, principles, reasons.
I bring these three up because they provide a framework drawn from other fields that we should use.
We should use this. This is not new stuff in the cosmos. Other fields also grapple with the notion of applying their own profession skills to solving individual problems, how to take the learning of individual solutions and find connections to several similar cases, and finally there are a very few people who investigate deeply for fundamental causes or principles.
I think our work in design typically is in the case area - the clinical area. I think we are gradually learning how to do applied research, and combine cases. Basic research is I think still very, very uncommon in our field.
I sense though, that in the first session we discussed the issue of how we deliver, or disseminate the results of our research – words, images, models. And I was really pleased with the Panel’s discussion on this point.
Yes. Let’s face it, you’d better say it in words…
Yes, Words and images work well together, and…
Yes. Models are effective.
In fact even in the second session there were intimations that the effectiveness we have in practice comes not merely from providing written reports that sit on the shelf somewhere. But we’re prized for our ability to visualise – to capture in visual expression understanding that we have, and indeed, whether this is in two dimensions or three, or…. in four dimensions.
I think what I heard in that discussion was actually skirting around the question of what are the core competences of design – and visualisation is certainly one of those. And I think that is a great a power to be explored.
But then again in the first session we were exploring….. opening up .
We ended that session on issues of education. Appropriately so, I think. We didn’t come to any great conclusion about that. But again the first session was more about provocation.
I found the second session to be something quite different. I think the theme of ‘integration’ emerged very significant for us, but very puzzling in some ways. But I was looking at my own mind.
‘What is the source of integration that I am hearing we are yearning for?
I found the focus to be around problems. In fact there were several – each of the questions to me was valuable because they posed certain problems.
The first was one from Arlene (Oak). (Nice to see you again, Arlene. I remember several years ago visiting you at Cambridge and having a delightful conversation.). Your concern was about ‘how we bring the social science methods into design’, and I think that question sets off the core theme of the second session.
The core theme for me was this ….’Is design a new way of organising knowledge, as a whole?
Think carefully please about what I’ve just said. We are typically used to organizing knowledge on theoretical foundations. We sometimes organise knowledge around practical orientations.
Do we have the opportunity to see how human knowledge can be reorganised around ‘making’ - in all of its forms - all of its methods, all of its manifestations? That in fact we are seeing the beginnings of a new way of organising human knowledge.
I don’t want this to be too messianic, or grand, or pretentious, but let me tell you that when Vico laid out his new science, his new science was about making as a core of learning. We have an opportunity to begin to think about how knowledge from other fields can be recast in terms of human experience - and the service we provide. Going back to the point again of the distinction between the fine arts and design, that serves people.
So I think the question Arlene raises is fundamentally to us - how we bring the knowledge from other fields productively into design thinking . And I felt that the panel explored that rather nicely.
I should point out that…. the methods in other fields, themselves, often come from other fields.
So my students when they learn about case methods, we don’t rest content with the social science version of that, we go back to the origins of case method and a actually study how case method was developed in law. And used as a teaching vehicle in Harvard. And how that spread systematically into medicine, into business and then into social science.
We also look at the other methods and techniques that are employed. Moving through the social sciences, not always concerned with interpreting those methods as they would be interpreted within the social sciences, but often what is their bearing for design .
I think that the concern for discussions of colleagues within other fields is extremely important. I think if we don’t do that vigorously and force our students, encourage them…my gosh…. force them….. we are going to have big trouble down the road, because, if design offers a way to us to engage the world newly, we must be prepared for that. And face the consequences and the overhead in cost. And there is overhead!
And I do think that the comment that design is at the crossroads to many disciplines today is v-ery true. Exceptionally so. And it is one reason we have the opportunity to speak up more effectively. The window is open for us, because we are at that crossroad point. And it is in fact Peter’s (Peter Town) comment that I want to particularly cite now.
Peter gave a story that to me sends chills down my spine. ‘Designers forced down the food chain’, because in fact over the past ten years, or fifteen years, many of us have been struggling for us to move I do want to say to you to answer your question, and to the comments that were made on the panel - I do believe the window is opening for us. That many corporations and government agencies are open to the idea of design as a new way to tackle problems. The challenge is for us to get it straight and do it well. That we can’t remain content with an older style of design - a style that’s uninformed, with the extent of learning within other fields.
I’m involved in the re-design of the Australia taxation system, and believe me, that came after the management consultants had given their theoretical explanation of system relations, and didn’t know what to do next. So the two weeks I spent in Canberra was the beginning of…. now of their ten year venture. For they themselves, internal to their organisations, are developing a design capability. Well knowing that they can’t make themselves into designers in a glib manner.
So lots of opportunity.
Also other corporations around the world and governments, again, are allowing us the possibility, in place of the McKinsey’s , and…. defunct Andersons.
I thought that David Durling’s question challenged us on creativity was another good example of a problem we face in the field.
To be candid, the discussions of invention, or the art of invention , or what we liked to call in the 20th Century, now the 21st Century – creativity, is an old matter in western culture, and I doubt that this tradition has been lost or forgotten. It exists, and books are still there. They are still valuable. And we need to go back and re-think that, because invention theory has been a core learning in western culture from before Cicero. It is no magic. In fact, when I read J. Doblin’s cookbook for design – and don’t know how many of you know of it - it was not published, it was circulated in manuscript. He listed about 20 methods for creating new design ideas. It’s no magic - he has interesting ways. That cook book – written by a designer – a fine designer – echoes Erasmus’s book on ‘Cordoba’, which lists, I guess … Methods for Discovery – (I see some knowing nods in the audience. Yes you know those…. alright ..alright. See I can come from the States and know a little bit about it.)
(Audience chuckles)
Another example though – we can use design to use and reanimate learning for purposeful result – if we are expansive, and I think that in your case…. Peter – designers can come back. But they need the wider base of understanding… and research is part of this activity.
That is also part of my observation.
Finally, I want to come back to Leif, and give my own answer to this question. And explain my disappointment with the response of the panel. I’ll chastise you all.
DD
DO.
DB.
I won’t be too hard on the Panel because we have struggled to bring ‘reason’ to design.
We respect the intuitive aspect. And I think I’ve heard that phase – the need for integration. I certainly respect this too.
But I understand, people may practice design by natural ability; they may learn it by working with people, who practice it well - in apprenticeships; or they may learn the principles of the reasons. And frankly, research is about exposing the reasons - the causes.
I make no pretence that I would turn away from Charles Eames when it comes to discovery and invention . I would value his….over anything else that I am likely to encounter. But we are not all born with Charles Ray Eames’ genius. We learn by studying with other people, or, if our research is effective, we pass on to our students better explanation of ‘why’ and ‘how’.
Now here’s why I want to come back directly to Leif’s question, because this issue of aesthetics is extremely important today.
We think of products as being useful,… having good engineering and technological reasoning embedded in them.
Yes…. a product must work well. We think of products as being useable, that is having ‘utility’…..having controlled the surface. (Look at her working the camera. She knows how to use that.) Yeh…..it’s important to be useable. And we study this.
But if a product is not ‘desirable’ as well, it will not succeed in the market place. And this is to the consternation of engineers and marketing experts, who, informed with research in certain fields believe that – “Oh.. this product will be successful”
…No ….No. …
Useful….. Useable…..and Desirable.
…..’Desirable’ is the domain of ‘emotion’, and aesthetics quality is the branch of that. In fact there have been a number of meetings around the world …. (we are now looking forward to the third or fourth meeting in Ankara , in the summer of the Design and Emotion Group. )….. we are just beginning to look more carefully at how emotion can be understood in a design context.
And what I‘m finding in this, is that we are moving away from the stimulus response model , which some psychologists seem to prefer – gradually we are approaching more sophisticated understanding of emotion that is needed.
I’ll end on this point. Early on a couple of times in the Panel discussion we heard the word ‘ethics’……. very quietly spoken…. And people don’t tend to talk about ethics a lot in our field frankly.….. I’m sorry about that. In fact we might say that the formal study of ethics in design began…no earlier that 1996. 1996! Not to say that we are not concerned with personal morality and issues of value, but those are personal issues. The matter of the formal exploration of ethics has waited.
I bring it up now because the issue of emotion and aesthetic quality is intimately related to ethical matters. The definition of emotion is ‘the capability of having a feeling aroused to the point of awareness’. That point of awareness becomes a powerful product….. and leads us to the possibility of making decisions .
We think. We do. We make.
When emotion is powerfully brought forward and expressed, people gain their dignity and their freedom of action. So I think our exploration of aesthetics and emotion is intimately connected to the ultimate purpose of design, in quite a different direction than the fine art, but ultimately coming home . And we will see discussion of ethics emerging as well in a very new form. With much greater significance for us than some of our……. shall I say…… naïve comments about the value of design.
This is my interpretation of what we have seen over the last two or three hours today.
I thought it has been an excellent discussion. There are so many more things to be said, and you may disagree with the kind of integration I have tried to put together. You will probably disagree too. I have not tried to portray different philosophic positions. I just wanted to pick the themes up and connect them together. And I guess that’s what we all have got to do in a great session like this today.
We take this back and see if we can play with them together.
“Gosh. Is that what design research is about?”.
Well thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to inflict my opinions on you. Thank you to the Panel too.
AUDIENCE APPLAUSE
Alec Robertson
Back to DDR4 Question Session.
Some of us were to invited to speak. (Audience chuckle.)
We invited you to speak in our place.
Perhaps so.
This is only part of the whole day for those who have enrolled for that. I didn’t know what to expect of a session like this, because it was open ended. It depended on the questions; …..it depended on the answers….. as to whether we got something out of it. I think we have, as Richard has mentioned. So thank you all for contributing to this first session.