research is often portrayed as a
systematic inquiry-driven investigation
but in our experience of practice-based
design research we find that we reinvent
adjust and reconfigure well just about
everything we do in our work from
methods and outputs to the very topics
that we address
this mismatch between normative
assumptions about research and actual
experiences in practice-based projects
seems to lead to a tension when pursuing
and reporting practice-based design
research
so in this paper we discuss emergence
and talk about ways that we might more
fully frame and respond to it in our
research reports and evaluations
our fundamental message is that as a
community we should more openly embrace
emergence as an integral part of
practice-based design research both to
take advantage of and more accurately
represent designers work
to get an idea of what we mean by
emergence it is useful to contrast it
with other approaches to research
so for instance there's a growing
pre-registration revolution within the
quantitative sciences in which
researchers are encouraged to record
their hypotheses methods and analytical
plans on secure websites before starting
their studies
this allows reviewers and editors to
check to see whether they actually did
what they said they would
there are some statistical reasons for
doing this but the reason the result is
to create a form of research that is
that we call intention bound
that is
researchers original intentions guide
the entire study with little or no room
for deviation
in contrast emergence friendly approach
approaches are responsive to all sorts
of external influences new ideas and
insights unexpected findings and so
forth with the result that methods
understanding outputs and even topics
are continually left in play throughout
the course of the research
now research projects always involve a
combination of intention-bound and
emergence-friendly approaches but some
approaches are more open to emergence
than others
for instance some areas of sociology sts
and feminist technocides depict
emergence as integral to research
and although most accounts portray the
physical sciences as thoroughly
intention-bound the nobel prize-winning
biologist francois jacob describes day
science the sort of science that we
normally encounter with reasoning that
snaps together like gears
has underpinned by night science the
times when scientists struggle to
understand phenomena formulate
hypotheses and devise analysis a process
that appears entirely emergent in nature
now according to jacob knight science
doesn't appear in scientific reports
because it's necessary to purify the
research of all affective or irrational
draws
to in order to convince other
researchers in other words to formalize
accounts um in a way that we think
resonates with the way practice-based
design research tends to be reported
night science can be written out of
scientific research reports because the
day science remains the controlled
experiments
statistical tests and so forth that make
up the science that we know
but for other fields the distinction
between day and night science may not be
so clear and in fact it may be that most
insights and understandings emerge from
their night science and then any day
science in these fields is essentially
post-hoc rationalization
this begs the question though of whether
emergence is in fact integral to design
research now there's lots of evidence to
suggest that it is
for instance most accounts of design
practice portrayed as divergent
unpredictable and emerging
for example our call our co-author peter
cron his colleagues studied 10
influential practice-based design phd
theses and showed various distinct ways
in which they balance intentionality and
emergence in their research
in addition many practice-based design
methods also encourage emergence from
ethnographic studies and cultural probes
to design fictions and improvisational
drama
and as hci designers
draw on this sociological sts and
feminist traditions that we described
earlier they also bring with them an
openness to emergence
moreover practice-based design
researchers are not accountable to their
original design briefs in the way that
commercial designers are where
commercial designers usually have to
clearly respond to brief set by their
clients design researchers are not
strictly accountable to the briefs that
frame their work which they usually
write themselves in the form of research
proposals and this freedom from
accountability again allows their work
to be emergent
so for all these reasons it's kind of
natural to think that emergence is
integral to practice-based design
research
however there are a number of factors
that may inhibit emergence in design
research as well
for instance how open design researchers
are to emergence may depend on how we
understand what it means to take design
term design practice into design
research
we outlined two basic approaches to this
the first says that many forms of design
practice can be understood as research
if it is appropriately articulated to
bring it into conversation with other
research
the second note says that for design
practice to be design research it needs
to take on aspects of more traditional
scientific processes such as
predetermined questions hypotheses
methods and so forth
the choice of which approach is accepted
and of course there are others will
determine whether emergence is welcomed
or whether it is inhibited to produce a
more intention-bound version of design
research
another reason why emergence may be
inhibited has to do with designs
neighbors in the technical community
insofar as design research produces
fully functioning research products it
becomes necessary to talk to the more
technical side of our community which
traditionally reports its work as a kind
of day science that jacob talks about
perhaps because of these inhibiting
factors it seems rare to see emergent
aspects of design fully acknowledged or
highlighted in reports of practice-based
design research
this tendency to present practice-based
research as intention-bound is a shame
because negotiating emergence is one of
the core skills of design practitioners
and we don't think that this should be
constrained when design is pursued as a
form of research
so we offer a number of strategies to
help practice based researchers think
about how to more fully embrace
emergence within their work
i don't have time to describe the
strategies
here thoroughly but i can give a taste
of them here
we discuss four different aspects of
engaging with emergence the first
group of strategies talks about how to
encourage emergence in the process of
design for instance by embracing
anomalous data or unusual settings as
inspirations or allowing technical
affordances to suggest new directions
rather than thinking of them as
technical difficulties
the second set of strategies talk about
how to manage emergence for instance we
suggest understanding emerging findings
in terms of encompassing research
programs rather than as deviations from
the initial goals of research projects
and we also outline a series of
frameworks for understanding the
contributions that emerging directions
might make within projects and programs
the third set of strategies explores how
we might better narrate emergence in our
reports so we borrow from mark blythe to
suggest that design research should be
considered a journey an exploration of
unknown territory rather than as a quest
for predefined goals
we also advocate seeking inspiration
from very different literary genres for
reporting our work from travel writing
to fiction as alternatives to the kind
of linear scientific style reports that
commonly seems
most common
and the fourth set of strategies
suggests how we might better assess
emerging research
for instance we advocate taking the
starting points of research the initial
questions and hypotheses and so forth as
entirely provisional and open to change
we suggest that we should give more
weight to assessing outputs in their own
terms to de-emphasize systematic
methodologies and conversely to validate
emergent ones
and finally we advocate valuing agility
and responsiveness in research not just
the ability to stick to a predefined
research plan
overall this paper makes a very simple
point we believe that emergence is
integral to design practice
and that it should be embraced within
practice based design research not
inhibited or hidden
and we suggest a number of strategies
for how we might frame manage and
evaluate emergence better in our
research not just for their own sake but
to help out in a discussion within the
field
this has just been a really quick
overview of the paper though so we
invite you to read it for more detail
thank you