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Abstract:

Design as a profession emerged out of the industrial revolution. However, the word ‘design’ has been around much longer and describes a human activity that we all do and have done for some time. This paper starts from the premise that although design may have many 'faces' there is an overriding commonality in a process concerned primarily with generating 'what could be' rather than 'what is'. This commonality has the potential to form a 'common ground' between disciplines. Hence, design-led methods could be further developed into an integrated research design for an interdisciplinary method that effectively enables all types of participants and researchers alike. This paper will examine design-led methods for the social sciences by looking at; the social science influence on design research methods, the evolution within design of 'design-led' research methods (such as cultural probes, game format and scenario building) and the influence of these creative and playful methods on the social sciences. The paper will assess the potential for further developing design-led methods for the social science research community and will conclude by considering what, if any, role the Design discipline may have in contributing to ‘design’ in other fields.

A Thousand Faces

Design is a primarily creative activity; a process that bridges thought and action that creates something new. Design is not principally about making however is integral for creating the new from which the new is able to be made a reality in our everyday lives. The activity of design is about asking the question ‘what could be’. Design has found a vital role in the industrialised world where the production of our everyday lives has been compartmentalised into separate steps: specifying > making > marketing > buying and using. The activity of design then becomes a profession of Design (industrial, graphic, landscape, etc.) able to give the industrialised process new ideas as the specifications for mechanised production to make for market. However, this does not remove the activity of design from its generic form, the creative process of translating thoughts into action. This activity has many different faces, existing in many different fields, whenever a practice engages in the creative process of ‘what could be?’ (eg. scientific research design, planing an educational workshop or deciding what to wear in the morning). This design activity includes skills such as, collection, selection, assimilation, translation and transformation. For example writing an academic paper has a large creative component which could be seen as a design process. As writers we must collect the research we might use, select the most appropriate information we will use, assimilate this information into our argument, translate our thoughts into written form and transform these ideas into a structure of an academic paper. Across the disciplines the creative components of our practices may not be considered often, or even considered as the creative process of design. More often than not creative processes in the different disciplines are not articulated, they are the silent (or even secret) part of our practices. Even in the Design field much of our creative processes are not articulated; Designers learn to design through doing and thus the process is not transparent but wrapped up in the tacit knowledge. This enigmatic quality of design means it is difficult to share these designerly abilities between fields. This elusive quality of the design activity has also been seen, in a time of reason, as being without rigour, validity, reliability or objectivity. The reason for design being dismissed thus, I believe, is wound up in much older traditions of creative practice; ‘cult of personality’ and ‘creative genius’. These traditions suggest that creativity cannot be taught, it is an innate gift presiding in those individuals exhibiting high levels of creative skill. This notion may have its uses in maintaining power and privilege for such professions, however, in the scientific era of reason it has largely locked out creative practices. The activity of design could be said to be un-scientific since the practice acquires a completely different paradigm to the scientific method. However, this designerly approach is not clearly articulated and hence is easy to dismiss. In dismissing a creative practice such as design we risk missing out on developing, sharing and utilising these creative skills and the different perspective they are able to uncover.

This paper aims to open up for discussion the question of – what, if any, role could the field of Design have in contributing to the activity of design in other disciplines. In particular I am interested in design-led research (emerging out of the discipline of Design in resent times) and the alternate research paradigm it offers.

For more information contact Viveka email: viveka.hocking@anu.edu.au

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