Abstract
The previous chapter mapped some of the most important characteristics in which constructive design research differs from professional practices and conditions for design. Our focus was on the implications of a shift from design practice to a knowledge-based discipline. We paid attention specifically to how this shift has been interpreted in constructive design research, and how this shift changes the outcomes of design. We saw a wide variation on perspectives from those focusing on how artifacts carry knowledge to those authors who want to turn design into a science. Although constructive design research focuses on artifacts and cannot exist without them, it differs radically from design practice in one respect, which is the context in which claims are justified. In design practice, the context of justification are the design world and the market. In constructive design research, the context of justification is knowledge and design research community.
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Notes
- 1.
This has been said particularly colorfully by Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar in their book Laboratory Life from 1979: ‘Occasionally, when members of the laboratory derided the relative weakness and fragility of the observer’s data, the observer pointed out the extent of the imbalance between the resources which the two parties enjoyed. ‘In order to redress this imbalance, we would require about a hundred observers of this one setting, each with the same power over their subjects as you have over your animals. In other words, we should have TV monitoring in each office; we should be able to bug the phones and the desks; we should have complete freedom to take EEGs; and we would reserve the right to chop off participants’ heads when internal examination was necessary. With this kind of freedom, we could produce hard data.’ Inevitably, these kinds of remarks sent participants scurrying off to their assay rooms, muttering darkly about the ‘Big Brother’ in their midst.’ (Latour and Woolgar 1986: 256–257)
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Krogh, P.G., Koskinen, I. (2020). Drifting in Four Epistemic Traditions. In: Drifting by Intention. Design Research Foundations. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37896-7_3
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