DDR4 20th March 2004: QUESTION 1

Professor Richard Buchanan. Host
I would like to turn you over to Alec now to get it started. ….Alec

Alec Robertson, (AR Panel Chair)
Thank you Richard.

AR (Panel Chair).
The first Question is from Professor Alan Bridges, Strathclyde University, Scotland (AB)

Professor Alan Bridges (Audience Questioner 1) (AB)
Oh oh. …Yes. In reading the list of attendees here, some of whom I’ve known for some twenty five years I thought really what do we know of what they have done? In those days there was no such thing as design research and we thought we were pioneering design research.

Chris (Jones) has pretty much disclaimed everything of the work he was doing then, but there was a lot of interesting work done, which has been lost in the mists of time. Very little of it is on the internet so we don’t really know it exists. But I think really it might well be worth, I think today, reflecting on where we were, and where we are today.

And I think looking back at some of the work that was done then would be useful, because I think that given the future, there was amazing ingenuity in trying to find new ways of doing things. And I think looking back at that now and perhaps reconsidering what was done might be an interesting thing to do.

AR (Panel Chair)
The Question I have in front of me is:

QUESTION 1: Does the panel believe that it is worth reviewing and refreshing some of the historic work while at least some of the key people are still around, even if some have disclaimed their work already?

AR (Panel Chair)
Would you start the discussion john chris?

Comment by john chris jones. (Video clip with transcript below)

Firstly I have not disclaimed anything I have done,….. but I did disclaim a lot of things other people have done!

(Audience chuckle)

In fact in the late 60’s and early 70’s, Christopher Alexander and I, unknown to each other both wrote disclaiming type letters to various journals of the day. We were both put off, I think, by the fact that design research started off in those days by being a combination of ‘design and research’ but rapidly it became an academic pursuit, which did not seem to any place for people in it. That was my objection. If the research has no real relevance to people then it hardly need be done, except for academic promotion, which is not really a proper aim, I don’t think.

I have brought an historic book, which is the Proceedings of the 1962 Conference on Design Methods. If anyone wants to look at that again, and if anyone has the energy to digitise it, that would be very useful. I made a little move towards that in an anniversary of that meeting recently, I put a very short version of it on my website. It is called the 62 Design Conference and on the home page. You can find there a chance paragraph from each of the twenty or so papers.

Dr David Durling (DD).
One of the things I will be saying at the DRS OGM this afternoon is that we are launching a new website, and one of the things we wish to do on the website is to archive materials. This would seem a golden opportunity for anybody here just to make joint bids possibly for AHRB funding to archive material of this sort. If anybody is interested in this we would be very happy to talk to you.

Professor Mike Press (MP)
As I am sitting next to one of the people who has made some of the historic contributions to the field of design research (jcj), the answer is ‘Yes, of course’.

But I think in design research we have a very poor sense of our own history. We all believe that we are art and design historians, and that discipline is important, but I think we have a very weak sense of history within design research. I think it absolutely essential that we revisit, and make more accessible, some of those absolutely seminal contributions from the 60s, 70,s and 80s.

With some of our research students I have actually plundered my bookshelves for works of people as Mike Cooley, who in a sense is on the edge of design research, but is no longer accessible. You can’t buy it. You can no longer find it on the internet, so I am photocopying some sections for my students. I very much welcome what David has suggested and I think that is a very important initiative. So we have to rediscover a sense of our own history, and then build on that history further.

AR (Panel Chair)
Denis O’Brien. Would you like to add anything here?

Denis O’Brien (DO).
Yes. About the process of refreshing. A lot of the research that was done had wonderful intent, and the intent still lives on, so whatever reviewing that was done it should dig down deep as to what was the real mission behind the design researcher . I think someone here is doing (something on) Bruce Archer. The process of interviewing the key players, who are still around, would be very useful to get a real personal history. And another component would be for all members of the Society to give one sentence on a piece of work that inspired them. I know Tony Buzan for example inspired a lot of my students. Definitely, we must look backwards.

Frank Peters (FP)
I think what is important about it is to re-examine it, because of its relevance to industry, to society, and the profession at that point in time is particularly important. There is no point in researching just for the sake of research. So to see it in its context and then make some recommendations as to what the methodology for design research should be from now on is needed. So I think it is quite important to review that work.

John Chris Jones (jcj)
May I make an interjection here. It occurs to me that at this moment the ancient programme that this is modelled upon “Any Questions” is going on at this very moment, and it gets replies from all over the around the country without the speakers, and I was hoping to hear some of that but I have a feeling that we are not going to hear from anyone now except those around the table. .

AR (Panel Chair)
No, that’s not the case. I will have the Panel members comment first, and then others.

Hilary French (HF)
As we are talking about design research, we should be thinking of research and what Christopher (Frayling) talks of as research ‘through’ art and design. And while acknowledging what has been said, it does start to sound like research ‘into’ art and design.

AR (Panel Chair)
Thank you, Hilary. I would now like to throw this open to the audience. Would anyone like to make a comment on this?

Rivka Oxman. (audience)
Having Christopher Jones here is a great honour for all of us. I would like to say it is not just a case of celebrating the past . But if we can only understanding our current research only by comparing it with the past, because in many ways we are reinventing many old questions and putting them in new dresses if you like, and it is only understanding the roots of the issues that we can go on.

Brian Sherwood Jones, Designer. (audience)
I think we need to do this as we do seem to have lost a lot on the way. We have suffered productivity massively over the past 20 years. Maybe it is just aging, but we seem to me we are in danger of losing two things - one is any real effort into design methods and thinking about the process, and a whole systems approach. There was so much optimism 30 years ago about the systems approach to things that just is almost non existent nowadays. So I think there is a lot we can dig up that is well worth reviewing.

Louis Gidney. (audience)
I am retired living in Highlands and Islands of Scotland where St Columbo, went to think.. I am interested in Philosophy, and I am interested in way design strategies have been used in the history of science and history of philosophy. There is another way of looking at this - design is concerned with people, of course, and I wondered whether there’s ,if we could say that the field needs a ground on which it can place itself on.

Phenomenology does actually.. ….there are ways of understanding the inner being of - or the being of,….. (There is a bit of a divide between Anglo-America philosophy and continental philosophy, which comes into this) Anyway….. in designing anything , whether it be a system, or an artefact inadvertently we are redesigning people. Think of, for example of the motorist, in the broad sweep of history, there is something of latch ability of the motorcar, which makes people behave remarkable responsibility actually.

AR (Panel Chair).
A good point to go to Alan and ask his view on what he heard.

Nigel Cross (audience)
Could I say something? Most of what I learned about doing design research I learned from Chris Jones so I hope he wont mind if I now try to disagree with something he said at the very beginning of this meeting. Something I would like to try scotch, if necessary , which is that there is something wrong with doing research for academic purposes.

Doing research in an academic way is one of the best ways we know of doing research. And it is a very human thing to do, and it is only people who do it after all. So to say it is not about people is a completely misleading thing to say. It is only people who do this kind of stuff. It is like folk music – what other kind of music is there, as one great folk singer said.

So doing it in an academic way is one of the more reliable ways of doing research, and it is one of the most reliable ways of advancing knowledge, and if advancing knowledge is not a very human and personal oriented thing to do then I don’t know what is. So I’d hate to let this meeting to start off with something being said negative about doing academic research.

AR (Panel Chair)
This reinforces the last point that it is people who are important, and not totally inhuman systems. I would now like to go back to Alan. Is there anything that has been said that encourages you?

AB It is encouraging that there seems to be so many people think it might be worthwhile, and David’s suggestion of trying to establish an archive might be useful for all of us. I am sure that individually we have bits and pieces of historic documents but probably no-one has a complete library. And actually to take the advantage of putting it together would be a worthwhile project.

AR (Panel Chair)
Perhaps we should move on.

DD
If I may, I would like to add something. We should not loose sight of the fact that we are trying to build a field of knowledge here, and if we are to mature as a research domain for design that it is vital that we actually recall these things from the past, as well as for the future.

AR (Panel Chair)
New question. Cherie Lebbon.

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