1.2 Examining the Role of the Practitioner-researcher

Design is a comparably young discipline with respect to the academy and engaging with research. Yet with design programs becoming increasingly more familiar within research universities, (at least in Australia and the United Kingdom if not consistently in the United States), the practice has been the subject of scholarship that builds on the longer-standing traditions of art history, cultural theory, and fields within the social sciences. From Heideggerian scholars to cognitive psychologists, this interdisciplinary approach has presented rich historical and socio-cultural analysis of designed artefacts by visual studies researchers in addition to empirical and philosophical accounts for the way design operates in the world. As valuable as this research will continue to be, it seems relevant as a practitioner-researcher to consider the potential for research into design that draws on the performative methods of creative practice and not just the qualitative and quantitative methods of the humanities and social sciences.

1.2.1 The Debate Surrounding Research through Design

For decades, design scholars have argued that design has its own distinctive approaches and expertise (Cross 1982, Jones 1992). Since the potential of research through design was first proposed in 1993, scholars have repeatedly revisited and refined Christopher Frayling’s initial categories (Findeli 1998, Jonas 2007). In parallel, examples of research through design have emerged, most prominently in the introduction of design PhD programs at Royal College of Art and the Illinois Institute of Technology during the late ’80s, and more recently in the trend of peer-reviewed exhibitions appearing at events such as the Design Research Society conferences. Yet even though this idea of research through, or by, design has become increasingly accepted, it would seem that potential research practices remain far from settled and are still perceived as contest territory, particularly when considering that ideas of how to educate researchers and develop practice-led PhD programs are still in development (Morrison and Sevaldson 2010, Scrivener 2004). As an example, for some researchers, including Ken Friedman, the idea of research through design is still deeply flawed (2003). Friedman sees design research led by reflective practice as a dead end and grounded theory as insufficient if we hope to build robust theories of design. His criticism rests with the emphasis on practice over theory and the subsequent understanding that the tacit knowing of practice cannot be explicitly articulated.

However, the institutional context of this PhD by project allows me to assume that the research will not be measured against the rigour of other disciplines. In this way the project can embrace Wolfgang Jonas’s (2007) position that the field needs to commit to the performative orientation of research through design and Findeli’s (1999) argument that the studio project is essential if the goal is to build design knowledge. In doing so I can make a virtue of the situated knowing and opportunistic methods of design practice. However, my guess is that Jonas and Findeli are not proponents of the practitioner simply investigating the character of his or her own mastery. The challenge, articulated for this PhD project, is to explore the appropriate kind of critical framework that would allow the reflection to transcend the nature of everyday practice. Consistent with the goals of this research project the methodological commitment needs to be oriented by its intention to make a critical contribution to the understanding of how designers think and act. In adopting a ‘design-oriented research’ approach I am underscoring the point that the research seeks to do more than advance and share my own mastery of the field of visual communication.

This project recognises that the idea of design-oriented research is not in itself novel, as there are whole communities of practitioners working on project-based research across and through a variety of sub-fields of design. These researchers may be advancing the practice of their field – through architecture, communication design or fashion, for example – or alternatively they may be applying design thinking to complex interdisciplinary projects. The distinction within this project is that I am seeking to bring a practitioner’s first-hand perspective to the theoretical discourse that investigates design praxis. The design projects within this PhD generally explore design knowing, practice and thinking, while the meta-enquiry of the PhD more specifically explores the perspective a practitioner offers to the scholarship of design research.

Findeli asserts the importance of practitioners engaging in this kind of enquiry.

Then it is advisable not to leave the inquiry into the relationship of knowledge to action (or theory to practice) in the hands of theoretical disciplines…any longer. This inquiry, with all its social and ethical import, has to be appropriated by the practitioners themselves in a gesture of sovereignty and responsibility (1999, p112).

A corresponding argument for contributing to the scholarship of design research by first undertaking design-led research is also found in the call for less-talk-more-action (Seago and Dunne 1999) and the observation that the abstract philosophical debates about design research may to some extent be resolved by simply doing more practice-led research (Scrivener 2004). 
Susan Roth identifies three tiers of enquiry, arguing that much academic and professional practice research concentrates on the “concrete/specific” issues of the first level, while acknowledging the productive potential of advanced research into the “conceptual” and “theoretical/philosophical” enquiry of the next two levels (1999). My design-oriented approach to research seeks to model how practitioner research need not be marginalised to contribute only specific or conceptual outcomes to a project-based case study. My ambition was to examine the visualisation research case study in a way that would explore the potential of design-oriented research to disclose both practice-led, yet philosophical, insights about design praxis and thinking. Deploying studio-based methods as well as turning to strategies outside design, the practitioner-researcher is introduced to a toolkit of research methods. This serves to enhance his or her capacity to critically reflect on the insights generated by studio practice. The goal is not for the practitioner-researcher to become a philosopher or a psychologist, but for the designer to be sufficiently “self-conscious, rational and reflective” (Scrivener) to the extent that his or her insights into praxis can play a formative role in building theories of design. Consistent with the aims of the research, the project aspires to work with the unique nature of design practice by respecting Terry Rosenberg’s call to harness the poetic potential of design knowing (2007), leaving it to other disciplines to construct theories that are supported by and in turn inform design educators’ collective understandings of design.

The Paradox of Design Research

It is worth acknowledging the paradox of so-called ‘design research’. This field of activity is oddly named, since it often downplays the value of design or the designer. Lawson acknowledges the continued adoption of Cross’s phrase “designerly ways of knowing” as general recognition for the unique nature of design (2004), yet the majority of the research that seeks to define what makes design distinctive has often been undertaken by sociologists, philosophers, historians and cognitive psychologists (to name a few fields); not many of these researchers see themselves foremost as designers.

Conventional approaches to research can seem at odds with how designers might intuitively approach a project. As an example, even the act of beginning by writing the project’s aim and rationale and undertaking a literary search can run counter to the designer’s impulse to begin by proposing ideas into a situation rather than standing back to assess the situation first. Yet, even as some researchers have argued that designers have a disciplinary responsibility to account for how they think and act in the world (Burdick 2009, Cross 2007), support for adopting designerly approaches to research does not often translate to the mechanics of peer review. The research work presented and published still tends to fall short of embracing the opportunistic, rhizomatic, speculative, discursive and open-ended nature of design practice. A case in point: the editorial of Design Research Now acknowledges the dominance of essays on design research over project-based research, citing that “current projects often (still) do not satisfy the quality standards proposed by the pioneers of design research” (Michel 2007, p17). Similarly, the editorial standards and peer review process within established vehicles for disseminating design research, such as the journal Design Studies and the Research into Practice conference, by their names alone, show how they privilege research into design over design-led approaches.

This creates a situation in which designers are encouraged to accept that the scholar can take responsibility for articulating and framing how we talk about design, in turn allowing the designer’s own practice to go largely unexamined. For although reflection is an integral part of designing, multiple factors work against the practitioner being predisposed to stop and examine how he or she thinks and acts across a body of work. So although there is a wealth of literature that proposes ways to account for the design process and the distinctive qualities of designing, the texts read as largely a conversation between scholars (Jones 1970, Simon 1982, Archer 1995, Lawson 1997, Dilnot 1999, Cross 2001). It is not surprising that this literature has limited impact on studio teaching in the academy. Even with increased publications of design research, the offerings are scant in comparison to the dissemination of best practices through coffee table design books (Poggenpohl 2004, Lawson 2004). Studio educators may work in an academic environment yet they continue to think like designers, believing that research should generate ideas that are useful to practitioners (Biggs 2004). However, even with research through design being framed as useful and application-oriented (Michel 2007), many institutional structures continue to privilege research that reflects the dominant paradigm of the humanities and the sciences (Rosenberg 2007).

The paradox of ‘design research’ is that academic expectations of what constitutes research have somewhat restricted the designer’s capacity to play a significant role in shaping much of what constitutes design research. This has led to the perception, at least at many design schools in the United States, that the designers’ expertise has been dismissed, their perspective undervalued and their engagement in research seen as unimportant. Schön discusses this by drawing attention to the dilemma of the academy’s interest in rigour and the practice world’s emphasis on relevance (1992). Reflecting on the status of the practitioner within the academy, Schön notes the sense of “abandonment or alienation” practitioners can feel if expected to defer to the “esoteric knowledge” of the academy (1992, p120). At the level of design schools, the result is that few practitioner-educators seek to research the more academic, abstract terrain of design praxis; instead more design educators are motivated to research the specific concerns provoked by their immediate fields of practice. The curricular structure and instruction style in most Western design schools often models a tacit mentor approach to studio instruction, a good example being the instructor/student interactions described in Schön’s architecture studio case studies (1987). Many design educators were educated in this way and continuing this mentor approach to teaching allows them to abdicate from interrogating the more tacitly understood, yet transferable qualities that make for an expert designer. As learning is a process of observing and doing, the explicit conversation tends to focus on issues of utility and form-making, masking the hidden curricular learning about the design process and practice (Dorst and Lawson 2009). This has significant implications for education, especially as we find ourselves moving into a more trans-disciplinary, collaborative context for design practice where designers need to be more articulate about how design thinking is distinct from other disciplines.

Yet there is an opportunity to (re)define the relevance, validity and accessibility of design research. Motivated to engage the practitioner-educator in meta-conversations about design, the approach to research modelled here seeks to transform how the practitioner-educator defines his or her expectations and ambitions for design research. My goal is to develop approaches to research into design that can embody a practitioner’s perspective and prompt deep examination of his or her base understandings of design praxis. Focusing on the studio-based design educator, this research attends to this interstitial space between the practice and the scholarship of design.

1.2.2 Toward a Design-oriented Approach to Researching Practice

With consideration for the issue that the designer’s practice expertise is not valued when it comes to research, it seems relevant to question whether designerly ways of knowing can be useful when undertaking research. Cross, with reference to lectures by Archer, establishes a basic set of characteristics by which to assess the methods and intentions of what he calls good research (2007). The research program of this PhD explores the possibility that these characteristics – “purposive, inquisitive, informed, methodical and communicable” – can accommodate a design-oriented approach (Cross 2007, p126). In chapter 4.2.2 I make the argument that the attributes of design might productively, if unconventionally, meet the primary ambitions of these research characteristics. With this move it becomes possible to reframe how the designer understands the relationship of design research to their studio practice.

Ezio Manzini positions the practitioner at the centre of design research, not because of the methodological approach, but because “[d]esign research is an activity that aims to produce knowledge useful to those who design: design knowledge that designers and non-designers…can use in their processes of designing and co-designing” (2009, p5). This research project specifically focuses on stakeholders within the academy, privileging the designer-educator while also considering the broader community of design scholars and students. This means that the approach to research needs to negotiate respecting the expertise and motivations of the practitioner while also seeking to influence the scholarship of design and the aims of design education. Cross (2007) recognises that designers tend to value projects that are practical and appropriate, and Krippendorf (2007) writes about designers being motivated by challenges, opportunities and possibilities. I think both of these observations go some way toward explaining why the practitioner tends to resist the abstract, philosophical tone of some research scholarship. Therefore, the challenge for this project is to work with the creative studio experience while negotiating the discursive experience of communicating the research. This will support the emergence of observations about design practice that not only have practical application but also present new possibilities for how we understand and teach design.

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This project works with the assumption that our predominantly theoretical understandings of praxis would be richer for being further informed by the experiential knowledge of a designer. The project recognises that the qualitative contribution the designer could make to this discourse depends upon his or her capacity to reflect upon and communicate on a way of thinking and making that might only be understood tacitly. To this end, this project adopts a multi-method research approach that seeks to enable the researcher and the research audience to discuss a practitioner’s often-tacit understandings of design practice.

Design is often characterised as a discipline well equipped to tackle ill-defined, “wicked” problems (Rittel and Weber 1973). Given the uncertainty, complexity and elusive nature of design knowing and practice, it seems pertinent to further consider what a practitioner’s perspective could bring to research into design practice. The second half of the dissertation furthers the discussion about the possibilities of design-oriented research by arguing that a designer-researcher can tap into the distinctive attributes many scholars identify with the agency of design.