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Essay
DesignResearch, an Oxymoron?

Why oxymoron?
An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two contra-
dictory terms. The word oxymoron is of Greek origin. It combines the word oxy (e sbarp)
and moron (= dull ). Thus, oxymoron not only names a contradiction in terms, it is an oxymo-
ron as well.Oxymorons maybe used for achieving rhetorical effects, as in workingvacation
and uninvitedguest.They may also result from conce ptual sloppiness, as in extremely ave-
rage, originalcopy. or samedifference. Oxymoro ns may rema in unnoticed when the mean -
ings of the contradictory pa rts are not distingu ished, as in spendthrift,virtualreality, and
Artificiallntelligence. Typically,comradictionsofthis kind are resolved by taking one term
as the inferior attribute of a superior concept. For example, unbiased opinion is a kind of
opinion. accurate estimate is a kind of estimate, and the reply "no comment" is not taken
as a com ment.
Oxymorcns are not mere linguisti c oddities. words are far from neutr al bysta nde rs
of what ha ppe ns in the world. They can shape the ir use rs' pe rceptions and d irect thei r
actions. For this very reason, and to enhance its academic respectability, the design com-
munity has begun to adopt vocabularies from the more established disciplines, without
noticing, I suggest, the impl icit importation of paradigms that are essentially alien to it.
One a im of th is essay is to show that design research is an oxymoron whose contradlc-
non s, becau se they are not obvious to everyone, can lead its najve users into thin king of it
as a kind of research si milar to what reputable scientists do.

Whaf doscience researchers (claim they)do?

Science is said to va lidate propositions tha t state facts. Research
is the process by which this is accomplished, ultimately reveal ing the nature of what ex-
ists from what was observed, starting with simple hypotheses.golng to more general theo-
ries, and ultimately reaching laws of nature. Since nature does not talk, the process of
uncovering its secrets is not an easy matter. Scientists talk among themselves, but thei r
talk is not cons ide red scie nce. Science starts with da ta - reco rds of obse rvat ions, meas-
ureme nts or texts - th at ca n decide a mong compet ing hypotheses and valida te o r inval-
idat e theories concerni ng them.
Why are data essential to research? Experience s a re hard to study. Happenings
come and go away like thunderstorms and spoken words. Witnessing historical events ,
watchi ng a game of sports, o r being aware of designing somethi ng, is nor inter-subjectively

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 ana lysable as suc h. To be su re t ha t our obse rvations are nor enti rely s ubjective, irr
duci ble illu sion s, scie nt ists rely on ot her scient ists who, wh en ag ree ing on wh at t he>
are willi ng to co nclude that t he phenomena of interest existed independent of their
jecrivtties. Exclud ingobservers' subjectivities from propositio ns about the observed \Ii
is a defin ing feat ure of scient ific research . However, ag ree me n t on what happen ed can
establ ished on ly if the phe nomena of int erest have been observed jointly and records
them are co ntemporary in orde r to be co mpared side by side and examined by many. n
is wh at dat a are expected to do. They mu st represent th e phen om ena of int erest, surv
t he co ndi tions that gave rise to t he m, a nd rem ai n s ufficie nt lydu rable to withstandu.,.,-I
ana lysis. Researche rs take great care to assure themselves and others that thei r data
reliable in t his se nse and wort hy of th ei r t r ust, wh ich mean s assu ring everybody t hat
body has ta mpe red wit h them.
This tangible natu re of data is also implied in the uncrit ica l use of metaphors tt
implicit ly absolve researche rs from th e resp on sibilit ies for their creation. For examp
cla iming tha t data were di scovered , fou nd , collected, or sa mpled entails t ha t t hey \Ii
there to begin with and that the researcher merely picked them up to look at t hem . n-
metaphorical description of how data came into th e hands of t he research er, and Of'!
th at, is what mak es critica l assessme nts of thei r representati veness un necessa ry, assu
researchers of having noth ing to do with the data they a re analysing, and justifies desert
ing research result s asjindings - as if they were me rely uncovered in or ext rac ted f
ava ila ble dat a. I will retu rn to th is point later.
But what is resea rch ? Fu ndamentally, it is - just as the English word s uggest
re-search, a process of repeated searching for patterns that a re m an ifest in available cia
In othe r languages, th e English research may focus o n different as pects of scientific wo
for exa mp le, th e Ger ma n Forschung em phasises rigor ous inqu iry into truth , but rhis u
involves recurring searches. Scientists are trained to be systematic a nd ca reful, sysre
attc by leaving nothi ng out from wh at was observed, a nd care ful by going throu gh rh -
data , aga in and agai n, until th ey ar e s u re th at wha t t hey find is unquesti on ably evident
not t he result of spurious causes or flighty imagination. Re-search involves so rting, reo-
arranging, tabu lating, weigh ting and compa ring data in place of the phen om en a ofimes-
es t - much like ta ngi ble objects ca n be han d led - but systemat ica lly.Processes ofscienti
resea rch a re institutionalised, which encourages researchers to publish t hei r res ults 1
the hope that colleagues will confirm t heir findi ngs, or bu ild on th em .
The re-search ed patterns a re necessarily sim pler a nd more a bstract th an th e der
in whic h t hey occur. For one thing, re-sea rch findings are stated in la nguage, whic h can
not but om it what escapes the researcher's vocabu lary. But they also ignore details consic
ere d irrelevant - irr elevant to th e researcher's t heo ry or hypoth esis. For exa m ple, statist-
ica l a nalyses can extrac t regr ession equations, clusters, networ ks o r causal cha ins froJ?"
available data. What does no t fit these patterns is co nsidered unexplained variation or
noise. Pearson's product mom ent co rre lat ion coe fficie nt, for example, measures the

hsay
 degree to which data conform to a line ar relationsh ip between two variables. TIm!: degree
is the rati o of what fits to what fits plus what does nor.
What about predi ctive th eori es ? We ca n specu late about t he futu re , but data from
th e future are ne ver presently ava ilab le. Scient ific th eories are predictive by Kene ra lisi':!.&.
patterns foun d in data t hat are cu rre ntly available to d ata t ha t do nor yet exist. (Note th at
predictions anticipa te additional observations, in cluding, but not exclusively, of fut u re
pheno me na.) Per example, when sta tistical hypoth eses are considered, tests of the statis-
tical significa nce of findi ngs measure t he ge ne ra lisa bility of patterns found in a sa mple
of data to a po pu lation of possible data , of whic h th e sam ple was a pa rt. Sign ifica nce is
expr essed in probabilisti c terms, th e probability of t he conti nued existen ce of t he ob-
servea anems. Thi s seems ent ir!.JY unproblematic until we realise t hat predictions (a)
are int ri nsica lly co nservati ve by assum ing th at th e patterns observed in the past wi ll con-
tinu e to explai n fut ure ob se rvations, a nd (b) leave no space for hu ma n age ncy bm&-a r.d:.
ing futu re observations as necessa rily fotlowtng frompasr findings .
- Pina lly, re-search is con sid ered applicable to any s ubject matter. Scient ists re-search
th e working of a machine, just as th ey study th e performan ce of an econo my, a play, or
what de signers do. Cons u me r resear chers may ge ne ra lise th e pe rforma nce of one product
to a ll prod ucts t hat ca me from th e sa me assem bly lin e. Econo m ists derive t he ir pred ic-
tions by extrapolating past trends into t he futu re. Likewise, the th eori es of design t hat
"tV !'JJW '1JV ~vv~ I~N emerge from observations of what designe rs co mmonly do acco unt only for what t hey d id,
"not for now they might red esign the th eory t hey were followi ng. It is well established t hat
Alof t 1lflb"1 y''l. ttt-
N .~'\NI' scient ific forecasts of tec h no logical deve lopme nts are nororl ou sly un successful , la rgely
because design escapes the co nservatism of t he re-sea rch process - bu t t his fores hadows
what will be discussed next.

Whatdodesignersdo by comparison?
The etymo logy of de sig n goes back to th e Latin devsigna re,
~ i ng out , settingapa rt, giving sign ifica nce by assigning it to a use, user, ma ker Q!.
~n e r. Sixteent h -century English emphasised the pu rposiveness of design, and because
design often involves d raw ing, or ' m arking out', wh ile 17th - cent ury English moved de-
sign closer to a rt . Based on th ese or iginal meanings, we cou ld say: Design is makingsense
of things(to orhers}. ? V41 tI,t ~
The phrase ca n be read as ' design is a se nse making ac tivity', claiming percepti on ,
expe rience, and perhaps ap pear an ce as its fu nd amenta l co nce rn, a nd t h is reading is
qu ite acceptable. It ca n also mean t hat ' the prod ucts of design a re to ma ke se nse to th eir
users ', a nd t h is inte rp retation is t he ce nt ral focus of TheSemantic Turn.IOll It puts t he cre-
ation of'arte facts for future use by orhers into th e ce ntre of a ll design activities.

huy Des'ln Research, In Orymoron? .

 For Herbert Simon (1969) design is both broader and narrower. 02J He suggests:

'Everyone designs whodevisescourses ofactionaimed at changing existingsituat

intopreferred ones.Theintellectualactivity that produces materialartefacts is no
ferentfundamentally from the one that prescribes remedies for a sick patient or -
one that devises a new salesplanfor a company or a socialwelfare policyfor a st
Design. so construed, is the core of all professional training; it is the principal
that distinguishesthe professionsfromthe sciences. SChools ofengineering, as wen
schoolsofarchitecture, business,education, law, medicine, areall centraltyconcem -
with the process ofdesign. (pp. 55-56)

Simo n's account cou ld be a starting poi nt , except- an d this may be due to the pe-
riod in which he wrote th ese line s - he reduces design to rational prob lem solving, who
begins with defining a problem in terms of howso mething ought to func tion, proceeds
enumerating alternative solutions to that problem, and ends with methods of selecnn
the optima l or satisfactory solution from among them. Myown experiences lead me
de pa rt from Simon 's rati on al paradigm in two ways. First, I observe tha t designe rs, in
elud ing myself, a re motivated in at least th ree ways, by

Challenges, troublesome conditions, problems, or conflicts that have escaped Ire

solution. Challenges arise from the perception of presently undesirable ccndhices
th at see m to defy rou tine improvem ent. Simon problem solving would be on e exam-
pleofthis.
Opportunities not seen byothers to do something, to improve one own or other peo-
pie lives. Opportunities do not im plythe presence of problematic condit ions, rather
they offer choices to move into some thing new a nd excitin g without having been i;
prob lem at the time.
possiblliues ofintroducing variations into the world that others may not real ise or de
nor da re to consider. From the perspective of evolution, these variations are ran-
dom mu tations, without apparent pur pose or plan, a nd they may prove to be suc-
cess ful or not. Just bein g different moves many poets, pain ters, a nd com posers .
There is no rational explanation fordoing somethingdifferem, except pe rhaps per-
sonal satisfaction.

To me, rationa l problem solving is j ust one way of designing a nd I do not wish to
lim it design to wha t Horst Rinel (1984)ca ll ' ta me proble ms'Jw'

Second and mo re imponantly, the kind of design that occupies my attention is hu-
man-centred. If design is to encou rage a rtefacts that are mea ningful to ot he rs, to users or
stakeho lders, it must at least ackn owledge, if not support, th eir conceptions and desires.
This requi res (a ) listeni ng to how other people th ink and j ust ify thei r actions in worlds

Ess ay Klaus Kr,ppendorff

 they a lwaysare in the process of const ructing to live in, or( b) inviting the sta keholders of
a design to pa rticipate actively in the des ign process. So conceived, desig n is a n esse n-
tia lly social activity, one tha! ca nnot be sepa rated or abs tracte d from the context ofp eo-
pie's lives and certa inlynot be replaced by a deon t~J~ i c or a lgorit hms for opti rrusauonj.,
discussed by Simon, which might well be appropriate to eng inee ring desig n. ~..- f l t ll ~

Let me suggest five activities that define human -centr ed design.

Designers invent or conceive possible futures, including its artefacts that they may
be able to bring about, imagin able worlds that would not come about naturally. A
causally determined world and future , by contrast, would be evidence of nature
work and of th e absence (or irrelevance) of design activity. Artefacts a re roducts of
human agencx. They do not grow on trees. Design is fundamentally tied to conceiv-
ing futu res that could not come abo ut without human effort.
Designers need to know how desirable thesefutures are to th ose who might inhabit
them, and whether they afford diverse communit ies the spaces they require to make
a home in them. Desirable ~ tures reside in l angu a~in communication, particu-
larly bet ween designers and the likely inh abitants of these futures. Ev idence about
unde rsta ndi ng the se worlds consis ts of the ability to articulate a nd reartlculate
these futu res for des igners to ta ke not e.
Designers experiment with what is variable or could be changed, in view of the op-
portun ities that variability could open up for them and ot hers. Laws in the natural
sciences, by contrast, state what does not vary-cannot be varied or has not been
varied. The variability ofl nterest to designers has more to do with people cultu ral
commitments, habits, a nd values. Some variabilities a rej ust not recognised, ha bits
and values, some are activelyresisted, and some a re eager lyembraced. Probably the
most impo rta nt task for designers is to create poss ibilities that nobo dy has thought
.9f and would not have cons idered without rhet or ical interventions by a des igner.
These vari ables define a space of poss ible actions, a design space, as Phil Agre calls
it.l41Adesign space is an arte fact, a human creation, not observed in nat ure.
Design ers workout realisticpaths, plans to proceed towards des irable futures. By
rea listic I mean that these paths include sufficient details and ta ke account of cur-
rent ly available technologies a nd material resources, as well as th e abi lities of those
who might pursu e the m.
Designers makeproposals (of real istic pat hs) to those who could bring a design to
fruition, to the stakeholde rs of a design. Proposa ls are stated in language. How-
ever, they go beyond mere sugges tions for what to do or the policies to follow. They
mu st offer their addressees possibilities to rea lise their desires and coord inate
their action s towards somet hi ng wort hwhile. As such, proposals must enrolstake-

holders into a designer'sproject. The ends that designers may have in mind do not

Essay DesignResearch. an Oxymoron?

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 need to be the same as the ones that stakeholders pursue as long as the latte r .
involved, at least part of the way. Without a network of supportive and crear
sta keholders, a design ca nnot be realised.

Some of the contradiction s between what scient ific researchers claim they do
what designers do are as follows.

Simon alread y recogn ised th at the disciplin es of the sciences are concerned
what exists wherea s the disciplin es of design a re concerned with what, in his wo
ought to be. 02,;~ ms ofthis essay, whereas scie~ i fic th eories a re based on~
what existed and could be observed prior to an a nafjs is, design concerns artefac
th at are not yet in use and could not have been observed in use, for which data
Const itutively lacking, and experiences ca n at best be ant icipated. ~ J A ...
Whereas predictive the ories that arise from scientific research conserve the s
quo constitutively assuming th at the forces th at operated in the past continue '
the future~esigners need to break with the determinisms of the past, propo
novel and unt ested path s into alternative futu res, especiallyby involving the stake-
holders' creativity in realising a design .
Whereas researchers in the natural sciences privilege causal explanations, which
eludes them as originators or contr ibutors of the phenomena they observe, desi
ers intend to affect something by their own action s, something that could not re
from natural cause s, thu s defying the causal explanations of scienrific discourse .
Whereas scienti sts celebrate generalisation s, abst ract th eories or gene ral laws, sur--
pa ned by evidence in the form of observationa l data , designers suggest courses -
action that must ultimatelywork in all of the ir necessary details a nd in the future
Artefacts never work in the abstract. This contradiction is also mani fest in scier-
nsts' preference for abstract mat hematica l explanations, a nd designe rs' preference
"tor images, figurative models and prototypes. ,;
W hereas researchers theo rise..!!!.variancies, treating unexplain ed variations as un-
desirable noise, des igners are concerned with variabilities, conditions that could be
cha nged by design. Somet hing a na logue to Werner Heisenberg uncert aint y prlnci-
ple applies to this incompatibility. By focusing on what exists, researchers can not
poss iblyobserve what could but has not yet been alte red; by focusing on what cou
be altered, designers have no reaso n to ca re for why something had stayed the same
For these reasons scient ific theories are not pa rticularly interesting to design ers
un less the theory describes something that designers do not care to change or need
to build on .
Whereas resea rchers are concerned with the truth ofthei r propositions, establishec
by observational evidence, designers a re concerned with the plausibility and com-
pellingness of their proposals, which resides in sta keholders ability to rea rticulate
t hem in the context of the futures they desire and various paths to reach them.
 Whereas scientific researchers seek knowledge for its own sake, value-free, and
without regard to their utility, design ers value knowledge that imp roves the world,
at least in the dim ensions related to th eir design s.
Whereas theories in science describe nature as unabl e to und erstand how it is being !~' Hl.'t
investigated, theories of design add ress the activities of designers who ca n under-
sta nd not only what they are doing but also theor ies abo ut what they are doing. As
wolfgang jonas notes: ny theory of des igning has to include the generation of theo-
ties of designing as followed by its practitioners and xplain its own emergence its
own change. > p.184. Thus, a research -based theory of designing could never keep
up with the changes that designers introduce into their own subject matter.
Obviously, design and research a re inco"!mensurable in conception. They pursue un-
like episte mologies, at least in regard to the above. ' Design research' is an oxymoron
without question. As a subspecies of research, des ign research suppresses design. .~;~t
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As re-search stifles design. what inquiries could improve {( 'un
designpractices?
Unquestionably, design re-sea rch ca nnot support what design-
ers need to practise. But what would be a more appropr iate alterna tive? How and into
what shou ld des igners inqu ire? The Semantic Turn (p. 209ff) pro poses a sciencefor de-
sign, which is meant to suppo rt what designers need to do to make their claims compel-
Iing.lOll A science for design is distinct from a 'scie nce of design , ...t hat body of work
which attempts to improve our understa nding of design through 'scientific ' (I.e. system-
atic and reliable) methods of investigation ', 06; p. 96. The latter is exemplified by the
scholarship of art historians, sociologists of des ign, or theorists of technology, all of
whom generalise dominant features of design, historica l trends, psychological predis-
positions, or socio-cutrurat contingencies. Observi ng from outside t he process, a science
of des ign depicts des igners as being causa lly determi ned by forces not under thei r con-
trol, and can cont ribute little to the practice of designing.Ascience for design is also not to
be confused with a 'des ign science ... a n explicitly orga nised , rational and whollysystem-
atic approac h to design ; not jus t th e util isation of scient ific knowledge of a rte facts, but
des ign in some sense a scie ntific activity itself'.f06iAscience for des ign raises questions
from within the practices of design. I will spe ll out some of them.
First a nd fundamentally, designers create possibilities. possibilities relate to what
humans can do. Possibilities a re nor pa rt of a nd can not be observed in a nature void of
hum\ns. A science for design must nurt ure ways that enla rge the design space with in
which design ers act. Some of th ese ways a re psychological, freeing oneself from blind
spo ts and cogn itive traps. Some a re soc ial, making use of conce pt ions held by ot hers,
when brain storming, for in stan ce. Some a re technological, expanding a design space

Enay Des'ln Research. In O~ymo<on?

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 combinatorially, using computers, to generate alternatives that easily escape cognition
Some a re perspectival, ap proaching a design from multiple disciplinary perspectives, and.
some a re morph ological, suggesting transformat ions into alternative representations.
with di fferent qual ities. All of these ways expand the range of choices available to design-
ers (before na rrowing the m to a workable proposal). Re-searc h, as discussed above, ".
driven by ext racti ng certa inties from diverse data. Design, by contrast, th rives on un cer-
tainty that designers can crea te and handle.
Designers must be non- dog matic and anti -authoritaria n in orde r to question t
'findings ofscientific re-search. Blindlyaccepti ng scient ific authority means surrendering
J

to what existed in the ast. Undoubted ly, there are limits to what design ca n accomplish.
Forexample, I would be hesita nt to invest in a proposal for a per petua l motion machine.
+
It violates the seco nd law of thermodynamics. But even laws of nature are hum an art e-
facts. They may have withstood the test of time, but we can never know whether the fi n ~
ings of the nat ural sciences are valid in the time frame ofa design. The historyof design ii
full of examples where scientists clai med impossibilities that design ers ma naged to cir-
cumvent or prove wrong. Scient ists once ass ured us that it was impossible for humans tc
fly a nd nowwe do. Enginee rs calculated that the stee lwheels of'locomouves on steel tracks
would not have enough traction to pull a trai n, a nd they were wrong. In the 1950s, IBM
resea rchers are reputed to have concl uded that the world would need no more th a n five
compu ters.This did not disco urage Steve Wozniak and Stevejobs, working in a California
garage, to develop the first persona l comp uter. In effect, designers need to question pre-
vailing ontolog ical beliefs. Being afra id of underminin g common convictions ma kes for
timid desig ns. Proposing what everyone knows or a lready uses is not desig n at all.
Designers must vigorously examinetheirown methods. Design science, as Cross de--
fines it, institutes desig n methods, supposed to be scienti fic, and hence unqu esnoe-
able. loo]Legitimis ing some practices a nd delegitimising ot hers is the mark of a discipline.
Disciplines discipline their disciples. Design , however, is an undiscipline, one that should
be able to question anything a nd be allowed to try everythi ng - provided its products art'
useful, work, and benefit ot hers . But it should especiallyap plyto itself.
Design ers must inquire into how to createvariables, th ings that ca n be altered b:;
desig n. They need to lea rn to crea te what scientists mostly ab hor: changes th at canner
be explained by natural causes. Variability,the abi lity to vary someth ing, is a n exclusively
human ability. ju st as jj. c tbsoo -s 'a fforda nces 'J'" ! variabi lity is a relational concept.
relati ng human age ncy to the environment; to what can be done with something. As al-
ready ment ioned, inqui ries int o varia bleS-render knowledge of what exists less relevant
than the options th at variatio ns open up. There are physical cons tra ints, of course. Arte-
facts may 'objec t' to how they are treated by falling apart or just not doing what their
users had in mind for them . When invarla ncies are socia l or cultura l, design ers need to
~ I o re what it takes to unfreeze cheris hed habits or convictions, orto get people to learn
-!.omething ne~ Inquiries int o variability requ ire int eractions with people, not mort'
observations. They differ from et hnog raphic fieldwork of what users do, market research

Essay Klaus Krtppendorlf ",

of user preferences, and ergonomic st udies of th e efficiency of human int erfaces with
technology. The latter descri be wha t people do, not what they can do.
Above all , designers participate in stakeholdernetworks and need to know how to sup-
port such networks and energise them with compelling proposals. I have al ready suggested
that design must rem ain u ndiscipli ned but it ca nnot be tota lly free when it inte nds to sue- /
ceed. For designers, success means enrol ling stakeholders into the project of their design.
'rhls is what kee ps design responsive to the conceptions, desires and capabilities of others,
a nd it 'd isciplines' t he necessarily unru ly design profession als - but not fro m with in the
profess ion. Unable to rely on data from a desirab le fut ure a nd wit hout real experience of
what is being proposed , design ers need to kn ow what makes their proposals compelling.
Elsew here, I have outlined severa l approaches to thi s effec t.'?'! I can not reiterat e th em
her e except to say th at design ers need to inquire int o th e co nce pt ua l abilities of d iver se
stakeh o lders through pro ces se s o f excha ng ing narratives with th em about po ssible fu -
tu res. Consequent ly, because de sign becom e real in com munica tion with others, inqu iries
int o what ma kes a proposa l compel ling a re inqui ries int o how people un der stand a nd act
on narratives pertai n ing to desirable worlds. Some scho lars have suggested that design is
an ethical enterp rise. If des igners real ise th at theyca n not go alone, ca n not force the ir con-
ceptions onto others, a nd that whatever they propose must reso nate wit h stakeho lder
concepnons.se the questions that designers nee d to ask are im plicitly ethica l. The only
ethical principle I wou ld add is to avoid monopol ising design in a profession and instead
delegate the practice to as many stakeholders as possible. Design is a basic human activity
to which everyone should have access. Professional designe rs must not usurp the ability
of other stakeho lde rs to design thei r own futures. Proposals for designs may fail for all
kinds of reasons, and syste matically st udying why th ey failed is an important sou rce of
changing design practices from wit hin.
I su ppose most of these suggestions for inqu iries in preparation of design ac tivity
do not co nfo rm to wha t trad it ion al design ers do whe n th ey say they do resea rch . Let me
mention th ree tradition al kinds and explore th eir value.
First , surveying useful ideas for how a pa rticu lar prob lem migh t be so lved. Gen rich
Altshu ller et al. su rveyed so me 200'000 pat ents and found 77 per cent uti lised so methi ng
alread y existi ng wit hin the inventor's field. log1 Eight een pe r ce nt imported ideas from
othe r a reas. 4 per cent rea lised new concepts, and on ly 1 per ce nt pio nee red landmar k
inven tions. Th e p rob lem of t he first 95 per ce nt is to find so me thi ng that a lready exists
but elsew here. While surveys o f this kind m ight prevent rein vent ion s o r ena ble design er s
to creatively deviat e from wha t is al ready known, th ey do not say anythi ng about how
th e1 e ideas co uld be utilised a nd are, hence, not about design practices.
Second, designers often start by tryi ng to understand how an artefac t is to function.
Ind eed, desig ners tend to spend much time exploring what they are asked to do, for exam-
ple, by taking the current version of a product apart, observing how it is used in d ifferent
situations, visiting the manufactu rer, talki ng to sales representatives etc. Louis Sullivan's
widely cited sloganformfollowsfunction abbreviates the common but naive belief that the

"
form ofa product that designers need to find auto matica llyfollows from a thorough under-
sta nd ing of its fun ct ion . However, understanding is not wha t re-sear ch ca n provide. a
deep understan d ing doe s not auto matica lly lead to idea l forms. In fact . that deeper
und erstan din g of how so mething need s to work ca n limit a designe r's att enti on to th
cosme tics ofwha t already exists a rather min imal des ign cont ribution. Sometimes. star.
ing naively or from scra tch can prevent o ne from be ing boxed into what clients an d u
expect des igne rs to deliver.
Third, there is one a rea where re-sear ch fn the sense described above ca n rna
valuab le contributions a nd that is by pretesting a design. In the contex t of des igners
ing to ma ke proposals to those who ma tte r,we need to realise th at proposals are Hngui
con struction s whose compellingness usually depends on extra linguistic devices: sketches,
mode ls, d iagram s and demonstration s, but they can a lso be en ha nced by empirical l!'t'
dence that a design works as claimed. App roximations to that future evidence may be
rained byobse rving prot otypes in action. how targeted users respond to and benefit f
a design . Valua ble as this kind of re-search is. it ca n be cond ucte d on lya fter a design is
least provisionally complete. Pretesting is necessaril y lim ited to pa rts of a sta kehcl
network. perceived bottlenecks, typically users. Pretest s merely approximate the ulti m -
reali sati on of a design .

Hiding design in cheprocessa/scientific inquiries

What researchers claim th ey do is no t the whole story a nd Vi
is missin g reveals their blind spots. Let me discuss two a nd end by suggesting a less de.
sionaryepistemology for scientific inqui ry, includ ing research design .
First. th e mecaphorical language of the acce pted accounts of scientific researchgre-
vents acknowledgemem s o/ the researchers ' agency. As above noted , researchers speak
resea rch result s as findings, d iscoveries , or tru th s - as if th e phenom en a they descn
had been there to begin With, th eories were hiding them selves in the dat a, laws WQU
g overn nature, ma king the task of scient ific research on e of uncoverin g what is behi
the obse rvable surface of nature. But pattern s must be recogni sed before th eir per vast
ness ca n be tested. Re-cognition -cognising so methi ng again - Impllcates a lon g htse
of the resear chers ' conceptions. Researchers' co nceptua l involvement cannot be avci
by de legating pattern recognition to mech ani cal devices, to syste matic a na lyses or sta..'-
lstlca l tests. Such mechani sm s. meant to ass ure objec tivity,a re a lways design ed bysorre-
one a nd, hen ce. a re representative of its des igners' conceptual repertoire, a nd what t
indicate mu st be re -cogni sabl e as well.
It follows th at re-sear ch results a re not the properties of dat a a lone, as claimed,
out of how the data fit a researcher 's conceptua l a nd lingu ist ic vocabulary, The diffe
en ce between out standing and normal scient ists lies in the form er 's ability to ask imer
 est ing questi on s, generate releva nt data, and desc ribe th eir implicatio ns in convincing
terms. This is not to suggest that research results are subjective, but that so-ca lled find-
ings a re th eproduct of int eractions bet ween the data and t heir treat ment. Privileging
th'eP rope rt ies of dat a at the expense of th e resea rchers ' role as the c~rs of hypo-
theses, proponents of theories, and designers of systems of a na lysis den ies human agency
in the produ cts of science. The skilful design of resea rch by scientists th us beco mes the
victim of the episte mologica l commitme nt to objectivity, the illusion of being able to
obse rve with out an obse rvert'v'o r to re-sea rch without th e cogn itive and lingu istic h isto-
ries of the resea rchers.
Second, in order to preserve the abstract-objectivist!"! or represen tat lonaltt" con-
ception of scientific (pro pos itional) language, the accepted accou nts of scientific re-
search deny or omit the context in which re-search takesplace. This may be demonst rated
with Bruno Latou r a nd Steve woolgar's (1986) five-stage model of scientific discov-
ertes.ou schematically stated as follows:

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Based on eth nographic stud ies ofscientific practices in research laboratories, astro-
nomical observatories a nd other scientific enterprises, Latour and Woolgar noted that
virt ually all research st arts with (l) documents: the literatu re of t he discipline in which
problems are ident ified as legitimate ta rgets of invest igation, lucrative requests for re-
searc h proposa ls; or puzzling gaps in resea rch results pub lished by colleagues.
In a second step, such verbal matter gives rise to and defines an object ofinvestiga-
rion: (2) document -'t object . In statistics, this step means ident ifying a population that
can be sampled with suitab le instrum ent s. In physics, it nowadays mean s bu ilding very
expe nsive appa ratu s to ru n theory-informed exper iments that yield novel observations.
In psychology, experiment s with subjects a re typical. They induce individua l behaviours
perta ining to a research question that might not occur in everyday life. Public opi nion
researc hers des ign surveys and interv iew schedu les through which publics are con-
str ucted th at a re of inte rest to ca ndidates for political office or policy makers in govern-
ment.!"! This step generates data that would not exist otherwise. Researchers do not
merely stumble upon data . Data a re made, which prompts Herminia Alfonso to ca ll them

Essay n
poieta.,lS' Scient ific literature is full of how-to books on the de sign of expe rtmems,
measuring instruments, of questionnaires, of codi ng instru ctions, and oftran scri
convent ions. Even when da ta are produ ced by a process not controlled by th e scien
recogni sin g them as dat a make s al l th e difference.
The third step involves sepa rati ng the data from what cau sed them: (3) docume
object. To justify this split, a variety of devices are in use, for exam ple, for preventing
perirnenrer biases from polluti ng the data, relying on objective measuri ng instrumer
or admitting data to an ana lysis only when their inter-coder agreement is high. \\1-
such devices assu re that the data are reproducible, that the method of gene rating them
not affected by spurious causes, none of these precautions can change the fact that
data cou ld not exist without the ap plicat ion ofa design tha t gene rates these data.
The four th step inverses the orig ina l direct ion of the causa lity:(4) document E- obj a
now treatin g the data as selecting am ong hypot heses o r judgi ng the validity of a theory
inte rest to th e resea rcher. This is the step that researchers in the sciences treat methodr:
logically, a nd a lso th e step described above as the re-search process.
The fifth a nd final step, (5) 'deny (orforge t about) stagesl-3,' leaves ste p (4), re-
search, as the accepted wayofdescribing scientific research, effectivelysupporting the claim.
that research results represent phenomena existing in nature. Woolgar 1993 suggests:

'Step (5) rewrites history so as to give the discovered object its ontotogicatfoundati
Construing theprior existenceoJthe obj ect entails theportrayal ofthe observer as pa..
sive ratherthan active. We thus seethe rhetorical importanceoJthe antecedenceof till
objectin thewayit implicates aparticularconception of the agent(as) merely peripher--
al and transitory. It is as if observers merely stumbleupon apre-existingscene.' (p.69

One might be lenient and argue that steps (1) to (3) take less time or are easler tc
perform than step (4). However, ig noring the desig n phase of scientific resea rch a nd the
agency of the resea rcher/observer is no oversight. It is necessary to preserve the idea "
representation, t he belie f that resea rch probes reali ty the way it is. I take this the prima ry
motivation of ste p (5).
Suppose we were to igno re the devious step (5) instead of (1) to (3). What differ ence
would this make? Obvious ly, it would acknowledge the histo ry of the re-search process.
More importantly, it would require a significant shift in the episte mology of science from
a representational ente rp rise to a constructive one. I want to build on Heisenberg's fa-
mous assertion: 'What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method
of questioning;' Our method of questioning points to the discourse in which we construct
our worlds and ask ou r quest ions about these worlds. The answers we obtain reveal noth-
ing other than whet her our own actio ns , take n in view of ou r const ruct ions, a re afforded or
fail to be afforded by wha tever resides outsi de of us. Consequent ly, scient ific work does
not revea l what exists (in perpetuity or in fact), but what our cons tructions of the world

Klaus Kfl ppelld orl f

had enabled us to do - the data we were able to generate to test the hypotheses we de-
signed. While this br ings science and design closer to each other,the past tense in the last
sentence is of utmost import ance in distinguishing between the two. Science a rticulates
the constructions that worked so far. Design a rticu lates const ruct ions that might work in
the future - but not without human intervention.

Conclusion

Re-search as practised today cannot possibly serve as a mode l

for generating knowledge about design or to imp rovedesign. In fact, relying on re-search,
being necessarily conservative, would condemn design to elaborations of the past. Even
mymodest proposal to acknowledge scientists as designers of research processes does not
go far enough.
Inquiries that could inform design practices would have to start by acknowledging
the simple fact that design is concerned with how we may want to live in future worlds. At
anyone moment in time, these futures reside in narratives that are sufficientlycompel-
ling to coordinate the stakeholders in these futures and encourage them to do their best
to make them real. Whereas science concerns conceptions that worked so far, design con-
cerns what could work in the future, a future that is more interesting than what we know
today. A design is always a proposal, a conjecture. Whether it delivers what it promises,
whether it will work in the foreseeable future, cannot be known until it ceases to be a de-
sign and becomes part of its users' history. At anyone moment in time, the viability of a
design depends on its stakeholders' conceptions, commitments and resources, which
can be studied in order to inform design decisions. This is what inquiries in support of
design need to do. They must not become entrapped by a debil itating oxymoron.

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