Design (research) practice

Bidragets oversatte titel: Design (forsknings) praksis

Thomas Binder, Eva Brandt

Publikation: Konference artikel i Proceeding eller bog/rapport kapitelBidrag til bog/antologiForskningpeer review

Abstract

Koskinen et al. (2011) have proposed a framework for what they call constructive design research that more consistently than the broad notions of research through design (Fraylin 1993) or research through practice (Archer 1995) adhere to particular methodologies that produce knowledge through prototyping new possibilities. Thus the nexus of constructive design (research) is exploring the possible through making. Schön (1983) early argued that design practices are based on different kinds of experimentation, and that this opens up a space of virtuality in which the questions of whatever what is imagined can be done, where the experiment leads us and how we appreciate the outcome are raised simultaneously. For Schön this leads to a conceptualization of the designer as a reflective practitioner, who in an on-going dialogue with what he calls ‘the materials of the design situation’, establish both problem and solution through iterations of naming and framing, re-naming and re-framing the situation. Designers typically work from a (design) brief or a program that sets goals for what is to be achieved by the design The program operates as the first framing of a design space within which to explore possibilities through experimentation (Brandt and Binder 2007). Likewise in relation to design research we have argued that “the possible is always contingent and though research may convincingly provide arguments for certain possibilities both search and arguments have to be guided by programs that set a direction” (Binder et al. 2011). Along these lines we see the program as a provisional knowledge regime in the sense “that it is not unquestionably presupposed but rather functions as a sort of hypothetical worldview that makes the particular inquiry relevant. As the design work unfolds, it will either substantiate or challenge this view and the dialectic between program and probing is in our view central to any design practice” (Binder and Redström 2006: 4). Our suggestion is to see design research practices as fundamentally homologous to any other design practices both in terms of the way they are driven forward by a dialectic between program and experiment and in how they actualize potentialities through experientially manifesting ‘the possible’. This does not mean that design practices are in themselves research practices. Research practices must be answerable to a research question or concern that resides outside the program. Still exploring the possible can only be pursued through adhering to a program (Brandt and Binder 2007). Figure 1 shows our early attempts to visualize the relationship between overall research question, design research program and experiments in various ways. The main diagram to the left illustrates that the overall research question is larger than the actual research project, in the sense that different research groups often focus on similar issues and questions but apply e.g. various research methodologies, relate to various contexts etc. to investigate the research matter.
Bidragets oversatte titelDesign (forsknings) praksis
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelPractice Based Design Research
RedaktørerLaurene Vaughan
Antal sider10
UdgivelsesstedBloomsbury Academic
Publikationsdatojan. 2017
Sider101-110
Kapitel10
ISBN (Trykt)9781474267809
StatusUdgivet - jan. 2017
Udgivet eksterntJa

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