DDR4 20th March 2004: QUESTION 4

Next Question is from Dr Nuala Rooney of the University of Ulster, N Ireland.

Dr Nuala Rooney. (Audience Questioner 3)
Probably we all started out our careers with a portfolio of visual work when we entered college, and somewhere along the way, and especially with design research, the visual gets put aside and becomes quite wordy. We then represent everything we do in words. And it might be something to do with other disciplines, and other areas that are particularly word orientated, that we are trying to compete, or not sure what exactly to do with the visuals anymore.

QUESTION 4:
If panel members had to present their design research exclusively in either words, models or images, which would they choose?

jcj
This is a nice question for me because my main quarrel with design research in the early 60s and early 70s was about language. I would definitely use 'words', not only models or images. I would use those as a supplement. But if I had to choose one I would definitely choose 'words', but I have a very strict use of these words, of what kinds of words. And these words would not be exclusively abstract, and therefore inhuman in some way. They should be concrete and abstract – mixed together, as we had in Rosan Chow’s contribution; and that is what made it poetic, incidentally.

I was very put out in the very early days of designing design methods to find a lot of people were using the sort of language that is used in philosophy, and using it exclusively in this academic way. And they still are, and you can read without seeing a concrete word like, wall or can, or stew or bucket, and only abstract words.

And I think if you write about what the problem in design is, or the solution to it, in abstract words you end up with an inhuman solution. And it is sort of catching. It is quite an effort and one which is not done enough, quite enough I think to find words which are both concrete and abstract. And sufficiently true in that sense to reflect what the world is and the users of a particular design, need or require.

HF
I suppose, I would use 'drawings' if I could, always with the hope that someone would turn those into a building.

AR
That is a quick answer!! (Please see Postscript at end of this transcript.)

FP
I think I would choose to use 'words', but I totally agree not abstract words. And I think that is one of the difficulties for the designer; that they are not wordsmiths, they are good at visual images. And there is great difficulty in communicating with clients in a different language, and probably, in design research the language needs to be more compatible with design practice, and (then it) maybe taken on board a lot easier.

MP
Can I start with reading out some of the things in the original Viewpoint because I think it is one of the most relevant viewpoint and questions we have had.

“People still tend to be highly suspicious about the whole idea of design as an academic discipline. Sadly, this is especially true of academics from other, more traditionally-oriented disciplines. With a whole body of knowledge behind them, they are clearly well established. I look forward to the day when they look to us for insight, theory, context and ideas. Design research does more than just blur the boundaries, it offers a whole new way of looking at the world of research.”

Can I move back to what we were discussing earlier. I find that design is missing the boat here in terms of the opportunities for research. It has got so much to offer, if only it recognises its strengths and exploits its strengths and advantages, rather than dwell all the time on its weaknesses and dilemmas. And actually the way that it communicates knowledge is a particular strength.

(In) the work that we have done for the Home Office, what they really enjoyed about the research that we have done and the way we presented it, is that we always combine words images and models. And all those different ways that design can communicate on different levels we integrate together. They have not expected - just think wordy reports, it is when we have brought those distinctive strengths of design together that they have understood what the new knowledge is that we have generated and it can apply to policy.

DD
I would certainly answer the question as it is proposed here - clearly 'words'. Images and models have different resonances. We have used them all at the (same) time, or one or two of them at other times. So I would fully support what Mike has said.

DO
I am very keen on 'words' as well, but the 'spoken word'. So I am very encouraging of symposium and conferences and events like this, and models and images that aren’t explained, so the observer has to work at what the designer is trying to communicate.

There is too much monologue in design communication, where the designer speaks to the community. I am an ergonomist so the user is very important and so the user has engage in what is being presented, and articulate what they see and it is in what they see in what is presented, which is the starting place for curiosity; and with curiosity you then get learning. So we are looking at an effective communication, and obviously the more media you get, as we heard on the crime prevention project, the more media you use the better.

But it is the message that is being received that is the far more crucial a thing than the message that is being said. Because without the message being received effectively and being absorbed and integrated into peoples behaviour, you just get effective monologues.

AR (Panel Chair)
I’ll open up to the audience.

Dr Steve Little, Open University, (audience)
Its very interesting nobody has mentioned numbers. I spent sometime with a PhD student yesterday and we talked about the design of his research. And within the breadth of approaches within what is even understood as social scientific end of research you have very quantitative numerical approaches.

I have got colleagues who blanche if you use the term ‘model’ if you are not talking about a verifiable mathematical model. That it is the only model they will accept. They will not accept even a physical model.

At the other end we have got what is much closer to what we are talking about in reflective practice of qualitative and grounded design, which is very often participatory in its nature, its action orientated so forth. There is a much richer notion of research and even academic research but this does not mean you do not have to fight your ground in some of these areas, (more) than perhaps people from outside realise.

In the same way that design – as we say, if we talk about those two things at a high level we are never really digging down to the level of the actuality of the joint practice, and what are differences and dynamic in the tension between the difference of the two. I think we need to almost, in a sense, engage in some action research about design research, and discussing that, rather than staying at this high level.

Sarah Taylor . Heriot Watt University, Scotland. (audience)
We are talking about the communication of design and design research. I don’t know whether we have anyone from the AHRB today, but it is interesting. I went to a presentation by them about applying for funding and when you do so it is in a written format, and at the moment it does not actually ask for representation in the form of visual work. I feel this is something they need to address. If design research is to be taken seriously, then maybe there is a need to be addressing that side as well as the written work.

George Mallen, Systems Simulation Ltd. (audience)
I was a research fellow here in design research in the 1970s . I came here as a scientist. My background was in mathematics and computing at the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnham. As a republican Scot I had problems with the institutional names I has to live with - Royal Aircraft Establishment and Royal College of art. But in between, I served some kind of apprenticeship with Gordon Pask in the world of cybernetics.

And what I came here (RCA) to do was to continue some research that I had begun with Gordon, in aspects of cognitive behaviour, and design is an example of cognitive behaviour. I came here with colleagues to my left and to my right, and I think we did some good work. But with that act of institution vandalism, with the closing down of the Department of Design Research (at the RCA) in the mid 80s, but apart from that, there is continuation of the research process, questions, and understandings, and relevance to the particular question, is that clearly the modern mind comprises different ways of knowing the world. I am thinking of the history of evolution of the mind; one of the interests I still have of the relationship with design.

There is a very interesting hypothesis by Nick Humphries,(who is a think at the London School of Economics), in relation to question of cave painting, and this is relevant to the question. The idea that cave painting, if you think about art historical approaches for example, sees that it’s a kind of beginning of a new skill set – a new way of representing the world, and so on.

Humphries hypothesis is quite the opposite. Humphries hypothesis is that the cave paintings are the last relics of the old mind before the mind of language, logic, numbers came to play an important part in human evolution. And clearly one of problems we have in the modern world is understanding ways in which knowing the visual, musical and poetic, and ways of relation to language is one way of thinking.

There has been an extraordinary use of rational language in building a huge edifice of reliable knowledge, let's call it, which is 'science' – which is the understanding of the world.

That debate is still there. We don’t know the cognitive processes at work, and it is interesting – I think it is interesting anyway, that the world of artificial intelligence of the 1960’s, which we built our early models using the early work on - plans, construction and behaviour, for example; the world of artificial intelligence kind of petered out a bit in the 1980’s and 90’s as it came up against the huge problem of cognitive style and cognitive management. So then, the issue is not just a question of one-off type of representation of work, or image, but how our minds manage these different ways of knowing.

AR (Panel Chair)
What’s your final comment on this Nuala?

Dr Nuala Rooney , Questioner 4
It’s just important to use images in research, and to know that this has a lot of impact, and something that has a very, very direct impact. And if we just use words – the design journals are totally word orientated, this is definitely going to lose part of the active quality that is part of design research.

AR (Panel Chair).
There is just time for another question before the coffee; Tim Coward of the UWIC, Cardiff, Wales.

AR Chair Postscript.

There was a transcription error in the first early draft of these on-line proceedings for the reply of Hilary French to this Question 4. It has been corrected now, and was due to poor tape recording quality at that moment. Apologies to Hilary for this.

The question might have been a better one by asking for answers as to giving priority to rather than being an either/or question as to the use of 'words' or 'models' or 'images' for presenting research.

It is important in my view to consider the audience in presenting research results. Within the design community, I would have answered - 'visual modelling' supported by 'words' and 'images'; and for non-designers, such as clients of design research projects, who are 'wordy' people, I would give priority to the use of 'words' for them, if possible.