Drifting by Intention: Four Epistemic Traditions from within Constructive Design Research

By Peter Gall Krogh and Ilpo Koskinen

Constructive design research, is an exploratory endeavor building exemplars, arguments, and evidence. In this monograph, it is shown how acts of designing builds relevance and articulates knowledge in combination. Using design acts to build new knowledge, invite reframing of questions and new perceptions to build up. Respecting the emergence of new knowledge in the process invite change of cause and action. The authors' term for this change is drifting; designers drift; and they drift intentionally, knowing what they do. The book details how drifting is a methodic practice of its own and provides examples of how and where it happens. This volume explores how to do it effectively, and how it depends on the concept of knowledge. 

The authors identify four epistemic traditions in constructive design research. By introducing a Knowledge/Relevance model they clarify how design experiments create knowledge and what kinds of challenges and contributions designers face when drifting. Along the lines of experimental design work the authors identify five main ways in which constructive experiments drift. Only one of them borrows its practices from experimental science, others build on precedents including arts and craft practices. As the book reveals, constructive design research builds on a rich body of research that finds its origins in some of the most important intellectual movements of 20th century. This background further expands constructive design research from a scientific model towards a more welcoming understanding of research and knowledge.   

This monograph provides novel actionable models for steering and navigating processes of constructive design research. It helps skill the design researcher in participating in the general language games of research and helps the design researcher build research relations beyond the discipline.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Springer
• Release date: Mar 11, 2020
• ISBN: 9783030378967

Book preview

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020

P. G. Krogh, I. KoskinenDrifting by IntentionDesign Research Foundationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37896-7_1

1. Drifting

Peter Gall Krogh¹  and Ilpo Koskinen²

(1)

Department of Engineering, Socio-Technical design, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

(2)

Design Next, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW, Australia

In this book, we deal with the epistemology of design. Epistemology is one of the grand terms of philosophy, where it means discourse about knowledge — usually about certainty, whether we can trust our senses, thoughts, and other pieces of knowledge. For us, two design researchers, the concept is more specific. We deal with epistemology in one particular context, constructive design research, in which design artefacts are vehicles of knowledge creation. In our work we have identified four epistemic traditions in constructive design research: (1) experiential; (2) methodic; (3) programmatic; and (4) dialectic. These are described in Chap. 3. Our aim is not to contribute to philosophy; our aim is to clarify how knowledge works in constructive design research. Rather than tightening the bridle this book is our attempt to maximize the freedom of research as it happens in constructive design research. The descriptions and methodologies provided in this book is our attempt to give research legitimacy to a cherished design practice we call drifting — however, drifting by intention.

Drifting is typical to design, and cannot be avoided in it. We believe understanding drifting is crucial for understanding design and constructive design research. The concept of drifting also resonates with modest approaches to design rather than what we regard as currently overdramatized concepts like reframing, radical change, design driven innovation and so on.¹ While there are cases in which designers have dramatically redefined product categories, these are exceptions in an industry that mostly creates small improvements, and which equally often recycles old forms for commercial purposes in manner described by the French philosopher Jean Baudrillard (1994) in his work on post-modernism. This is the reason for why we prefer to talk about drifting, which we see as an intentional activity: it is not dramatic, and gives a picture of design as an occupation that indeed does change things and human relations, but usually through small, occasionally almost unnoticed changes. While carrying connotations of modesty, the concept of drifting does not rule out more dramatic shifts either, though. We believe it is better to see them as exceptions rather than as a rule. Design is much more than the peaking ideals, it is a dedicated profession also for all the mundane stuff we surround us with. A mundane de-dramatization also resonates with our Scandinavian heritage.

Throughout this book, we focus on ways in which drifting takes place when design becomes a research discipline. Our hypothesis builds on the idea of design accountability introduced in the writers’ earlier work Ilpo Koskinen and Peter Gall Krogh (2015). As a research discipline, design sits on two chairs: design researchers want to make sure they are accountable — or at least intelligible — to practitioners, but in contrast to design practice, their work builds on knowledge and contributes to it. If design becomes an academic discipline, its relevance to practice suffers, we argued, unless it finds a way to create an academic base that is still understandable to practitioners (see Kees Dorst 2015). One corollary of this idea is that design practice sets limits to what can be done in design research. If we are correct, and design disciplines are different from each other, constructive design research should respect these differences as well. Product design and textile design are different, as are graphic design and interaction design. Similarities in creative process should not be taken as a proof against these differences, and this is the case of the identity of being a designer as well.

Our approach to these concerns builds on an analysis of various interpretations of knowledge in design. We claim that the way in which knowledge and practice work depends crucially on how we understand knowledge. Knowledge for us is more than scientific knowledge; it is also practical. Every cabinet maker knows that learning the craft takes years, and there are research techniques that maintain the skills that turn someone into a master of this trade. The concepts of knowledge in design research reflect this division, we believe. Hence, crucial to the undertaking of design research is our understanding knowledge and its implications. To put it on standard philosophical terms, when design becomes research, i.e. leaves the context of discovery and has to play the game of ‘context of justification’ (Karl Popper 2002: 7–8). With this shift, design changes to a ground defined by knowledge rather than practice alone. This has given us the main question of this book: how does drifting happen when designers have an imperative to produce knowledge and share it with research community?

In the past couple of decades there has been considerable steps to close a gap. Design departments in technical faculties and departments of universities have attempted to increasingly include art-based ways of working, and arts and crafts based design institutions and units have adopted a variety of research techniques, theories and methods to declare its relevance to other disciplines and society. To understand this shift, we have collected a corpus of PhD dissertations described in detail at the end of this book. A subset of these dissertations has served as analysis and reading material in a set of PhD courses offered to students with a background in arts and crafts based institutions while also inviting students from more mature disciplines. It is during such events that we have witnessed scenes as the below (Fig 1.1):

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Fig. 1.1

PhD students using design skills to conduct research. Photo credit Lise Yde

Vignette: PhD students in Denmark

20 PhD students of seven nationalities are sitting on the floor in a large seminar room. After months of mulling through piles of literature and theories they have been asked in drawing to individually sketch and in pairs discuss and explain, and if necessary to re-write their research plan and how they are planning this to build new knowledge. As the session progresses the initial hesitation and confusion is replaced by lively enthusiasm and as one of the students noted after the session: ‘In the eagerness to live up to academic standards I’ve been reading so much that I had almost forgot the power I, as designer, have to explore and explain things when I draw and sketch!’

In our meeting with PhD students all over the world we have met many similar experiences and like-minded doctoral students in design; the preconception that in order to develop credible new knowledge I should first acquaint myself with science and theories from other disciplines before I can return to the practices and strengths of arts and crafts based design. Whereas doctoral students from university departments based on well-established technical or analytical research theories and methods initially have seen the training events as exotic glimpses into art based practices that may spur new ideas or a topic of study.

It is not the intent of this book to throw away sound and relevant knowledge of neighboring research disciplines and to replace it with imaginative creations of ink on paper. Neither is this book an attempt to turn classical sciences in to pseudo art. The purpose of this book is to point out how ‘constructive design research’ as it is termed by Koskinen and his colleagues (2011) may be regarded as a shared approach across institutionalized backgrounds. We claim that this is possible because the foundational challenge that what drives us all across these boundaries is: how do you design with the objective of producing knowledge?

Rather than looking at design as a topic and subject of research this book provides insights into how the act of designing is a vehicle for knowledge production and help researchers navigate and execute processes in which design is a research discipline. We have picked up our method from Eva Brandt and Thomas Binder (2007), who consulted three PhD dissertations to better understand how constructive design research is produced and documented, but we have extended their method from exemplars to a large corpus of over 60 dissertations. The three PhD dissertations they explored (Kristina Niedderer 2004; Adriaan Ianus 2005; and Tuuli Mattelmäki 2006) are included in our corpus too. While they ‘…map genealogy, compare interventions, and discuss how the outcomes of the various experiments become arguments in knowledge production,’ we have adopted an approach in which the recurring observation of ‘drift’ in experiments, research interest and theory and so forth have shaped our analysis and findings. This has led us to:

1.

Clarify constructive design research by analyzing four epistemological traditions at work in it;

2.

Suggest a Knowledge-Relevance model (K-R) in Chap. 4 to articulate how constructive design research operates in relation to both knowledge production and relevance;

3.

Analyze how hypothesis creation, design experimentation, evaluation and concept creation depend in epistemological traditions;

4.

Analyze ways in which design experiments relate to each other when structured for the production of knowledge — five ways of drifting elaborated upon in Chap. 5.

1.1 Drifting in Profession and Research

Design is by now both a profession and a research discipline. In constructive design research, the designer and the researcher can be inseparable roles (Koskinen and Krogh 2015). Often, it is the same person who merges interests of knowledge production and concerns for producing relevant products. This is by no means a novel observation. Harold Nelson and Erik Stolterman (2003) point to design as an activity of producing ‘Ultimate Particulars’, Jan Pieter van Stappers and Elisa Giaccardi (2017) show how design and research often carry different connotations and Sanders (2005) point to how design research is understood differently in academia and in industry.

The profession of design is often referred to as a ‘solution oriented discipline.’ Whereas it is true that design is concerned with delivering aesthetically attractive, useful, socially and commercially valuable solutions, it is often forgotten that design also is about questioning initial assumptions, convictions and theories in the pursuit of identifying the actual underlying challenges, concerns and questions. This happens in both professional practice and in research. Through producing sketches, artefacts, scenarios, mock-ups, service blueprints, screen dumps and video prototypes, the produced material meets the recurring sobering check: ‘what question is this project an answer to?’ As new knowledge evolves, the result points to findings that lead designers away from initial perceptions of the challenges and objective. This is drifting at its core and it is also a typical feature of design as a whole.

Drifting is found in most fields of research even though it is not always recognized as a proper scholarly practice. An illustrative example is a geologist who is trying to understand a ridge. He/she must study its history to understand how water, wind, and geological processes have shaped it. In this work, he/she makes notes and turns them into observations that help him/her to weave together a story that explains the observations. Throughout, he/she uses the best available methods to solve distinct problems as they come by. He/she may dig into libraries to find books that tell about the ridge. He/she may interview people who have lived by it. He/she may also interview other experts. He/she can take samples and analyze them with X-rays, spectrometry and radioactive carbon analysis. He/she also builds on theoretical knowledge geology and geomorphology have created over centuries.

In brief, he/she uses many types of methods and theories in putting together his/her story.

It is important to see that there are many types of knowledge in this story. In putting the story together, he/she makes errors and corrects them until both geologist and his/her peers are finally satisfied with it. His/her research drifts from one hunch to another; from one interpretation to another; from one line of inquiry to another. He/she carries on until his/her story is consistent and captures the essential elements that have shaped the ridge over millennia, and indirectly also tells what processes are irrelevant. Drifting of this sort is normal in any field of research.

1.2 Constructive Design Research

Our focus is on one specific type of design research, constructive design research. It is a phrase coined in 2011 by Koskinen and his colleagues (Koskinen 2011). While Koskinen et al. showed that constructive design research can be done in many ways, they did not, however, discuss its precedents outside design. The concept of Constructive Design Research emerged from having a set of research perspectives shed light on exemplars, concrete activities, and techniques of research performed across a number of design fields; some technically oriented, some arts and crafts oriented, and others action research oriented — all united by the interest of learning through constructing. The 2011 book pointed to principles behind constructive design research, and showed that it builds on three types of methodological backgrounds. Some researchers follow the sciences — mostly strictly those informed by experimental psychology — and conduct their work in laboratory style settings by de-contextualizing phenomena and studying it experimentally. Others prefer to go into the context and accept the fact that there is no way of controlling design when it enters real world. Yet others build on art and design and leave not only the scientific model, but also the social science model behind. Hence the main construct of the book, lab, field, showroom.

This is an ideal type, however, and only designed to capture methodological principles in design research. As soon as we turn our attention to the details of research practice, it begins to lose precision. In the preface of the book, the authors wrote:

While talking about this book, many practitioners and researchers have found it immediately useful. One word of caution is required. Many people ask how their practice fits into the Lab, Field, and Showroom framework. However, we talk about practices that are seldom pure. In fact, Chapters 7, 8 and 9 look at how theory, research practice, and the social environment create commonalities between these approaches. These chapters have their origin in a ‘deviant case’: when we realized that it is impossible to classify Ianus Keller’s PhD work under Lab or Field, we took a closer look at things that bridge researchers. (Koskinen et al. 2011. Preface)

This book steps into the field of constructive design research to describe one of its key characteristics — drifting — and how construction is related to research concerns of hypothesizing, experimenting, and evaluating. It goes to the minutia of practice. The main starting point that pushed us to this book was Stephan Wensveen’s PhD thesis A Tangibility Approach to Affective Interaction (Wensveen 2005).

Wensveen built an affective alarm clock that tried to capture the mood of the sleeper to wake him up accordingly. His process started with cultural probes that inspired him; it went on to a process of sketching exploring a variety of design options; it continued with a construction phase of the alarm clock; and it ended up with testing the clock with users in a laboratory-like setting with sophisticated trigonometric methods (Fig. 1.2). Like our imaginary geologist’s, Wensveen’s approach drifted between methodologies depending on the current needs; instead of following his methodology strictly, he was flexible in his practice.

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Fig. 1.2

Key activities in Wensveen’s dissertation work (a) Cultural probes, (b) Sketching alternatives, (c) Laboratory testing

When we discussed his case, and started to look at other studies that defined the constructive methodology as we understand it, we saw that Wensveen is not an exception. Rather, his research is the norm in design research. Even hard-boiled field workers do usability studies with percentages, and design and HCI have seen more than enough attempts to turn cultural probes into scientific measurement instruments (to the chagrin of their inventors and proponents).

1.3 Drifting in Design and in Constructive Design Research

We are not the first persons who have paid attention to the fact that the practice of design almost inevitably pushes a project out of its original, planned envelope. It is a standard wisdom of the field of design that well-executed explorations will reveal that the problem that pushed a project on its way is not the true problem. When an architect gets a brief, he routinely writes a counter brief to show he has acknowledged the client’s problem. When it is accepted, he usually gets more freedom to start the creative process. Similarly, industrial designers routinely negotiate a free option into their briefs even when the client wants to control the design process to an extreme.

This wisdom has found its way to design research too, which talks about changes in projects in several ways. In design anthropology, language usually builds on the idea of refocusing. The idea is that good ethnography has a tendency to show that the original problem given by the client in fact misspecifies it and can be dangerous if put to production (Kensing and Blomberg 1988; Blomberg et al. 1993). After Roberto Verganti’s book (Verganti 2009), product designers in most design schools in the world taught students to aim at radical innovations, whether these be technological or innovations in meaning, which he equates with design. His case comes from Lombardy, and his ideas can be seen as an effort to put in words Italian design after the Memphis group. His ‘radical innovation’ also has commercial overtones which again show his interest in economics rather than design. In a recent book, Kees Dorst (2015) has followed Einstein and talked about reframing as a key design process. For him, if a problem has no solution in its original context, designers need to shift context and find a fresh way to reframe the problem.

The way in which we understand drifting in design departs in important ways from design world parlance, which we find too heroic to describe what happens in design when designers drift. If the standard for a successful project is that it produces something the world has never seen before, practically all projects are doomed to fail, and design gets pushed to an exceedingly risky track. The language or re-, or the language of radical innovation is to us too dramatic to capture the reality of drifting.

Drifting, as we understand it, offers a much more nuanced and sensitive perspective on what happens in design. Designers who drift by intention sometimes end up with radical ideas that are technical in nature. Sometimes these ideas are innovations in meaning. Sometimes they refocus and rephrase, and occasionally reframe. At times, they end up with minimal changes only. Design literature and folklore alike are full of examples of these kinds of processes, and the most heroic design world stories.

We know that what we are saying goes in many ways against the grain in some parts of design research literature, which usually builds on engineering and business discourses rather than on practices of design as performed in school of design. When discourses are borrowed from engineering and business studies, ‘designing’ is usually seen as ‘creating innovation,’ which by definition means bringing something new to the world. There is a virtual cottage industry around the subtypes of innovation, but usually they fall on the radical-incremental continuum.

The problem here, in our view, lies in the idea that the criteria of success is novelty; this is clearly not the case in many fields of design, where change is constant, but it cannot be always reduced to novelty. For example, craft is usually more about perfecting existing forms rather than producing things the world has not seen, and happens through redoing, upcycling, remaking, and repairing. The same can be said about many other fields of design, like graphic design in advertising or fashion, which usually works by reinterpreting what already exists. Secondly, equating design with innovation over-emphasizes design as an idea discipline and undermines the key competence and truly difficult part of the discipline: constructing a balanced and valuable product at the end. Thirdly, every working designer knows that most of the business is in tiny improvements that are sometimes almost cosmetic. Changing colors in an action figure or updating a heat exchanger to accommodate new fittings is hardly a radical innovation, but it does create something new — and maybe not least changes the practices around