Yoram Reich
Engineering Design Research Center
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
EDRC Report 12-51-92, 1992
Design activities are fundamental to technological progress. Current design research holds tight to positivism, abandoned and critically opposed to by philosophers, mostly those outside the U.S. Maintaining the positivist view when conducting research leads to significant deficiencies in the quality of research, and to problems in transferring research results to practice. In spite of significant research efforts, the improvement of practice is slow. This improvement, in turn, does not necessarily reflects the diffusion of research results into practice, but rather, the development of ideas by practitioners. This paper analyzes this theory-practice problem of technology from practical, cultural, and philosophical perspectives. It proposes a research methodology of design and briefly shows how this methodology can shed light on some problems related to technology. The paper also discusses the fundamental role of design in technology, thereby viewing the research methodology proposed as a methodology for studying some aspects of technology.
Dear reader,
In this report, I aim at starting a dialogue about the reasons, nature, status, and potential solutions to the theory-practice problem of technology and design. Such a dialogue can start by asking readers like you to participate by sending me comments on this preliminary report. I will appreciate any comment, ranging from dismissing the ground on which I formulated the problem, through major criticism, to support of the methodology I propose. I am fully aware that the views expressed are represent a minority voice, therefore this report may elicit this full range of responses. I will appreciate comments reflecting different cultural and backgrounds and philosophical inclinations.
Sincerely
Send Comments to:
Yoram Reich, Department of Solid Mechanics, Materials, and Structures,
Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel
Fax: +972 3 640 7385
Electronic mail: yoram@eng.tau.ac.il
Existence will remain meaningless for you if you yourself do not penetrate into it with active love and if you do not in this way discover its meaning for yourself. ([Buber1967], p. 212)
The decline of technological competitiveness of many U.S. companies leads prominent researchers and practitioners to acknowledge that the relationships between design research and practice in the U.S. is in trouble [National Research Council1991]. This American National Research Council's study is one amongst occasional reflections of design researchers upon their activities. While these reflections may include discussions about research methods for finding design knowledge, methods for studying designers in their work, or the lack of transfer of research results to industry, they lack several essential ingredients of an inquiry. They lack a precise view of the world (i.e., ontology), a view of the relationship between the inquirer and the world (i.e., epistemology), and a set of methods for finding knowledge about the world with their corresponding ways of interpretations (i.e., methodology) [Guba1990]. And moreover, these three ingredients are intertwined with cultural background and political interests which are often neglected.
For example, if design researchers adopted the positivist view (as most do), they would have, as Guba (1990) contended, subscribed to a realist ontology, objectivist epistemology, and controlled experiments as methodology. In this study, positivism is interpreted broadly. It includes postpositivism, logical empiricism, analytical philosophy, and others advocating for any kind of universal method that is expected to derive and incrementally accumulate objective knowledge.
In spite of the decline of positivism in philosophy, mostly outside the U.S., it is still influential on researchers in many fields of inquiry. In addition, positivism provides a good characterization of how the public perceives the way research advances. Such a perception, and moreover, the predominant positivist belief that technology is simply applied science has severe consequences for the quality of practice. These consequences are instances of the practical theory-practice problem, henceforth denoted by TPP. A simple, idealistic characterization of the problem is that most researchers view themselves as capable of objectively creating knowledge about the real world, through the use of various scientific methods. Furthermore, researchers expect practitioners to use that knowledge. In contrast, practitioners, dismiss the viewpoint of researchers and further argue that researchers' findings are irrelevant to reality. Consequently, practitioners do not use research results. The final outcome is the lack of dialogue between researchers and practitioners on the problems faced by both. In this characterization, theory can be interpret as scientific laws, but also as tools or instruments developed in research, while practice is the the making of products associated with a specific profession or technology. The motivation of this study is to analyze some of the foundations of the TPP and to arrive at a design research methodology that can better facilitate practice.
At first glance, the goal just stated seems strictly pragmatic, yet, the goal of this study extends this notion. By improved practice I mean a shift from the positivist notion of ``the domination of man over nature and over fellow human beings'' to the quest ``for preservation and nurture'' ([Floyd et al1992], p. 19)
In this study, I attempt to analyze the cultural and philosophical foundations of the TPP and propose a methodological shift for design research informed by this analysis. The purpose of the shift is to restore the true dialogue between theoreticians and practitioners through a methodology of participation. The establishment of true dialogue may change the way research and practice are executed and also what problems that are to be attended to.
Usually, design is viewed as being subordinated to technology, since the latter involves a much larger social and cultural context than is addressed by the majority of design researchers. In contrast, I view design as a fundamental human activity underlying technology; therefore, a research methodology of design can be considered as a research methodology of technology. I will demonstrate this by answering key questions regarding the study of technology.
This study is divided into three major parts. The first part, consisting of two sections, discusses the practical aspect of the TPP. Section 2 reviews instances of the TPP covering the relationships between philosophers, researchers, and practitioners. The pragmatic problems of ``getting things done,'' that many professional face, have attracted the attention of researchers in these disciplines. Invariably, as Section 3 demonstrates, most of the attention has been focussed on studying the TPP from the usual positivist viewpoint. Although some researchers begin to address the TPP from its philosophical viewpoint, not much attention has been devoted to the cultural perspective of the TPP. The first part ends with a sense that a stagnation point in solving the TPP has been reached.
The second part of the study, consisting of three sections, deals with the theoretical aspect of the TPP. Section 4 provides several explanations for the recent development of the distinction between theory and practice and its practical consequences. It situates the explanations in a cultural and philosophical foundations, elaborated in sections 5 and 6, respectively. Attending to these foundations is necessary for advancing towards solutions to the TPP.
The third part, consisting of three sections, discusses the new research
methodology and its implications. Section 7 discusses the
foundation of the new research methodology: the design hypothesis,
arguing that humans continuously engage in designing their experiences
in the world. This can be interpreted in several ways including: as an
epistemological statement, namely, design of experiences is an instrument
for understanding; or as an ontological statement, namely, designing
experiences is a way of behaving.
Both interpretations are not entirely new, they were advanced before by phenomenology, pragmatism, and other praxis philosophies [Ihde1979]. I will illustrate these and two more important interpretations as they apply for all human participants in the process of technological change, concentrating on design as the fundamental activity underlying technology. Section 8 puts the design hypothesis into the practice of advancing design research by devising a new research methodology and demonstrating it in the context of a specific research project. Section 9 expands the design hypothesis into the practice of studying technology by discussing how the hypothesis applies to several questions underlying the study of technology.
Note that this study is not a philosophical paper; such paper, in my view, will be merely about theory. The literature contains considerable philosophical treatment of the TPP, but not that has led to the solution of the practical TPP. In addition, philosophy is not my domain of expertise, I merely rely on an impressionistic understanding of philosophy. This study is certainly not a technical paper in the common engineering sense; such paper will be strictly about practice. This study is about a combination of both, a property central to the theme of the paper: the collaboration between, and interdependence of theory and practice.