Wednesday, May 10, 2017

Knowledge Claims Made in Design Research

I am happy to report that an article by my PhD student Jordan Beck and me has just been published in a new issue of She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation (Volume 2, Issue 3, Pages 179-270, Autumn 2016).  [If you can't download the article, email me]

The title of the article is:

Examining the Types of Knowledge Claims Made in Design Research

The article discusses what distinguish research in design areas when compared to other research areas. We do this by focusing on what type of knowledge claims researchers make in their publications. We found some fairly clear differences between research areas and also some distinct patterns when it comes to research in design.

Here is the abstract of the article:

"Abstract
While much has been written about designerly knowledge and
designerly ways of knowing in the professions, less has been written about
the production and presentation of knowledge in the design discipline.
In the present paper, we examine the possibility that knowledge claims
might be an effective way to distinguish the design discipline from other
disciplines. We compare the kinds of knowledge claims made in journal
publications from the natural sciences, social sciences, and design. And
we find that natural and social science publications tend to make singular
knowledge claims of similar kinds whereas design publications often contain
multiple knowledge claims of different kinds. We raise possible explanations
for this pattern and its implications for design research."

And here is the last section "Conclusion" from the article:

"Conclusion
Multiple knowledge claims of different kinds within individual journal publications
might be the consequence of a young, multidisciplinary field. Another explanation
might be that scholars publishing in Design Studies tend to embrace the values of
design and science, which may account for those publications making claims of
fact and claims of policy. Finally, a third explanation might be that scholars publishing
in Design Studies are writing for multiple audiences with diverse needs. For
example, if a scholar is attempting to write for professional designers, it becomes
relevant and useful to make claims illustrating the utility or applicability of findings
in practice.

Our purpose in writing this article is not to make generalizable claims about
design research or the design field. Nor are we attempting to characterize all publications
in Design Studies, Nature, or the American Sociological Review. We do believe that
our comparison of publications in these three journals can serve as grounds for further
inquiry. It would be possible, for instance, to analyze a more comprehensive
sample of Design Studies publications to determine whether the pattern we describe
in this paper is generalizable. It would also be interesting and worthwhile to compare
our results with an analysis of other design journals to see if and how knowledge
claiming in other design journals manifests different patterns. Moreover, in
this paper we only discuss the kinds of knowledge claims made in design research
as opposed to the legitimacy of the claims in the field or the reasons for publishing
these kinds of claims.

We believe that understanding knowledge-claiming practices is an important
part of intellectual culture building. And it might be a fruitful area for design
research to distinguish itself from other intellectual cultures, since many of the
scholars and researchers working in the discipline apply research methods that
are not unique to design—like anthropology and ethnography—and they work on
topics that could be studied by other fields. Design could be considered a social
activity and, thus, studied by sociologists and psychologists on their terms and
within their culture. The knowledge claims contained in publications, therefore,
could be seen as an interesting and important distinguishing feature of the design
discipline whereas its objects and methods of study might be less distinguishable
from others.

We should continue to engage in the kinds of self-reflective questions that
brought the discipline to where it is now. But we should also begin to think more
intentionally about the kinds of knowledge we are producing and what the consequences
of its production might be."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting stuff. I've found that claims have very different meanings to different communities, and that technology design fields have been slow to adopt any sort of knowledge capture and dialogue entity. I trace the evolution of claims in human-computer interaction and how it's been used in technology design, science, and engineering in my Morgan and Claypool book, Making Claims.

Erik Stolterman Bergqvist said...

Hi Scott
Yes both Jordan and I have read your book and it has been helpful Of course, we all take different approaches and perspectives when it comes to the topic. I am just happy that there is at least now some of us who are trying to sort this out. Thanks for your booK!
Erik

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