One thing came through loud and clear at Tuesday’s talks: design research regards information as a resource too valuable to ignore. In this way, it’s no different from the rest of contemporary culture, where a specific relation to ideas and events outside the work has become a valuable ingredient in successful art or entertainment. Consider the explosion of films “based on a true story”, or the rise of the memoir and the autobiography as literary forms threatening to eclipsing the novel. When readers learn that what they’d thought was factual is actually invented, the backlash can be swift and harsh, as we saw in the recent scandal surrounding the revelation that Margaret B. Jones’ searing autobiography “Love and Consequences” was actually Margaret Seltzer’s novel about gang life in South Central LA. Would Seltzer’s book have earned the ecstatic reviews it garnered if it had been published as a novel? Many in the publishing industry thought readers would have overlooked the book if it had been published as a work of fiction, and it’s immediately obvious that information derived from lived experience is considered differently than invention (“Writing Truth”).
So the interest in design research can be seen as a reflection of the larger culture’s interest in setting design, art, and entertainment products into a context of ideas and experiences that are more widely accessible to users and readers than in an earlier age, when creativity was seen as a primarily internal or intuitive act. There are a lot of great things about this for artists, designers and ordinary people; we give up the somewhat shabby ideal of a heroic, protean genius-creator for one who’s engaged in the problems and practices of the very people who will ultimately use or consume the products they produce. Great. But there are a few things we, especially if we’re involved in education (which has a responsibility not only to promote new ideas but to preserve past knowledge), need to be cautious about, too.
To begin with, an emphasis on research (especially empirical research) as integral to creativity in design or art practice perfectly reflects our current collective distain for traditional authority. The distillation of contemporary abhorrence of authority to a slogan, such as Onny Eikhaug’s claim that, “the problem with experts is that they know too much”, is a mantra for the Wikipedia era, in which expertise is distrusted as somehow out of touch with the fast pace of life, or merely inadequate to challenges better suited to crowd-sourcing or maverick outsiders with original insights. As educators, we ought to think this one through. Writing about the way our relation to authority is changing, Peter J.M. Nicholson points out that “the agents we have traditionally relied on to filter and manage information – agents like research universities, the traditional media, and highly trained experts of all kinds – are less trusted as intermediaries than they once were”. Trying to fight that change is like trying to stop the sun from setting. But rather than fostering distrust for expertise by endlessly repeating its prevalence, we should provide students with skills to be able to evaluate sources of information and employ them responsibly and the encouragement that doing so will have rewards not only in the marketplace, but for them as participants in an increasingly crowded media environment.
Both Rama Gheerawo and Tina Park offered intriguing reflections on the use of design research, but each suggested the difficulties that lie ahead for those of us training a new generation of designers and artists in research. Right up front, we need to realize that how data is solicited, collected, documented, and categorized have profound effects on how it’s ultimately interpreted and valued. In my third year of teaching the Art of Research and countless conversations on the emergence of design research, I remain uncomfortable with the use of specific terms – e.g. “visual ethnography” – in art and design school. Not because I feel the techniques of sociology and anthropology don’t have a place in the lives of our students (I think they do), but as I learn more about these ideas, I realize the shallowness of our use of them in relation to the richness of their use in their native discourses. This is an old problem for art education, especially as it takes place outside of universities: how do we get the expertise necessary to teach our students, when most of our own expertise is in the handling of the materials necessary to make the products of our discourse? One can go around and around about the value of having photographers teach photo history or graphic designers teach design history, but at the end of the day, with all due respect to the few artists and designers who have a secondary, scholarly practice, students who study art history under art historians learn differently than those who learn from practitioners in the field. It’s not just a matter of defining research for our selves. Rama Gheerawo usefully talked about the connotations of ‘research’ when he introduced and concluded his talk, but I’m not sure that as, as a profession, we have the power to re-brand what research means to our clients and community.
Perhaps a more productive approach is one suggested by University of Chicago sociologist Ronald S. Burt, who has been working on a theory of “structural holes” (Erard). Burt, like research advocate Stephen Wilson, sees creativity as a collaborative endeavor in which designers and artists must continually expand social networks that, in practice, tend toward stasis. At Art Center, we are well positioned to exploit structural holes and put our student designers and artists in contact with engineers and entrepreneurs so they can integrate the ideas of these professionals into their work. Of course we do this in some programs, but it’s a challenge to continually open networks and lines of communication, one that is made all the more difficult by suggesting that designers and artists can somehow go it alone by picking up a few useful research skills.
Some of these sort of “holes” were revealed in Shona Kitchen’s presentation. One could neatly divide the idea of research into “pure” and “applied” foci, but doing so runs the risk of marginalizing the most original and valuable contributions a hybrid (or perhaps even mongrel) idea like design research has to offer. Artist/designers Kitchen (or Nina Katchadourian, or Stacy Levy, or Fritz Haeg, whose work is embedded in questions of language, ecology, and sustainability) and are powerful arguments for leaving room in the discussion of research for speculation and critique. Critic Martin Kemp has talked about the value of research-based practice in contemporary art, and there’s room for a more detailed exploration of that idea at Art Center (Honigman).
By now, I’ve probably revealed some fundamental misunderstanding of what design research is. If so, my apology takes the form of pointing out that describing what something does can help imply what it is, but not always. (For instance, I can tell you that a hernia hurts, might be unsightly, and can ruin your day, but you’d be hard-pressed to infer exactly what one is from that description.) It’s because I believe in the potential of what design research does, as I’ve seen it employed by my colleagues and students at Art Center, that I’m interested in seeing it more fully integrated into the curriculum and seeing its use adopted on the professional level. But as a user of design rather than a designer, my stake in design research is quite different than many of the values expressed at the conference. As a user of design, I’m for design research because it turns the designer into my advocate; armed with information gleaned form design research, the designer can explain to her client why her solution is superior to other solutions that may not embody my interests. As a user of design, I’m for design research because it puts the objects I use and look at into a larger cultural context, rather than leaving me with nothing more than some ‘creatively’ styled object. And, a user of design, I’m for design research because it promises to get designers out from behind their computers and out into the world where they have consider the impact of their work on the environment and the market.
The context one can build for one’s work through research is an asset too valuable to ignore. But, like all resources, the knowledge gained through design research needs to be thought of in terms of stewardship. Like all resources, it can be responsibly employed or carelessly exploited. Research creates responsibility; not only to utilize the information it yields, but to put it to just and ethical use as well (after all, a little knowledge is a dangerous thing). In the end, the value a researched context can provide to designers is enormous. But its value to others outside the practice of art and design – whether they’re configured as users, audience, readers, or whatever – is incalculable.
gerard brown is an instructor in the Humanities and Design Sciences and teaches The Art of Research to students on the Film, Fine Art, Illustration, and Photography tracks.
Works Cited
Erard, Michael. “Where to get a good idea: Steal it outside your group.” The New York Times. 22 May, 2004.
Honigman, Ana Finel. "Universal Leonardo". Artnet.com. 12 April 2007. http://www.artnet.com/magazineus/features/honigman/honigman1-19-06.asp
Nicholson, Peter J.M. “The Intellectual in the Infosphere”. The Chronicle Review. 29 Mar 2007. 20 Aug 2007 http://chronicle.com/weekly/v53/i27/27b00601.htm
Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology. Cambridge, MIT, 2002 (p. 38).
“Writing Truth in Fact and Fiction.” Weekend Edition. Natl. Public Radio. 8 Mar, 2008. 22 Mar 2008 http://npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyid=88008140.
