Huan Wang - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Huan Wang

Communication andrhetoric are inherent aspects of architecture. Architecture uses signs tocommuni... more Communication andrhetoric are inherent aspects of architecture. Architecture uses signs tocommunicate its function and meaning. This communication is rhetorical when it induces its perceiver to use or to understandthearchitecture—from ahotdogstandtoamonument. Movementsinarchitecture, suchasthe Gothic or the International Style, promote certain values and beliefs, and can be studied as rhetorical movements. Like linguistic communication, architecture consists of codes, meanings, semantic shifts, and syntactic units.

Books by Huan Wang

It is impossible to describe everything in constructive design research today, and we need more s... more It is impossible to describe everything in constructive design research today, and we need more specific language to understand what is happening in this discipline. For us, this language has been methodology, which gives a simple enough yet informative storyline. As always in methodology, there is a fine line between aim, description, and prescription, which we wanted to avoid. We hope this book is not read as a manual. Having said this, this chapter gives a few tips for establishing and maintaining constructive design research programs.

Chapter 8 outlined the ways in which constructive design researchers use design things in their r... more Chapter 8 outlined the ways in which constructive design researchers use design things in their research process. Design things, we saw, gather people around actual design work. 1 Just as any research, however, constructive design research cannot stop there. Any research program worthy of its salt needs to function in society, not just during the project. Successful programs keep designers dialoging with society; unsuccessful ones are unable to keep this dialog going long enough.

The Swedish computer scientist Pelle Ehn recently argued that design is "thinging." 1 This sounds... more The Swedish computer scientist Pelle Ehn recently argued that design is "thinging." 1 This sounds mysterious, but the bottom line is that he describes a down-to-earth approach to design. It is his latest attempt to explain why designers get far better results with rough cardboard computers than using sophisticated systematic methods like flowcharts and simultaneous equations. In Ehn's opinion, the reason for the success of these rough "things" was that they brought people to the same table and created a language everyone could share. 2 Design things populate design studios and fieldwork. They range from quick black-and-white sketches on any piece of paper all the way to those skillfully finished prototypes that researchers construct in places like Eindhoven and London. 3 The key point Ehn makes is that these things play an important role in keeping people focused on design. His argument is etymological. The English word "thing" has Germanic roots. This root is the word ting, which in Scandinavian languages still means an "assembly," where people gather to make decisions about the future of the community. If we accept an etymological argument like this, design things are like town hall meetings: places where people gather to decide collectively where to go. 4 Design things are indispensable tools for transforming designers' intuitions, hunches, and small discoveries into something that stays -for instance, a prototype, product, or system. 5 They provide the means for sketching, analyzing, and clarifying ideas as well as for mediating ideas and persuading others. 6 In Bruno Latour's philosophical language, design things turn weak hunches into stronger claims. They also translate many types of interests into joined strongholds and provide tools that take design from short to long networks. 7 This ability to gather people to talk and debate without any command of special skills is what is needed to work with systems design methods. Flow diagrams and other rationalistic tools cut too many parties out from design, creating a caste system. Understanding these forms requires training, and the mere use of these tools tells non-experts to stay away ). 8 Design Research through Practice.

This chapter looks at the theoretical background of constructive design research. When we look be... more This chapter looks at the theoretical background of constructive design research. When we look beyond individual studies , we find a few recurring theoretical sources. When we look at what inspired the selection of these sources, we see how most constructive design researchers have roots in twentieth century Continental philosophy, social science, and art. This chapter elaborates on the three methodological approaches outlined in Chapters 4–6. At the surface, the three approaches may seem like independent silos; if we go beyond the surface, we find a more common core. This shared core also explains why constructive design research differs from the rationalistic design methodolo-gies discussed in Chapter 2. Interaction design has inherited its methodological premises from computer science. Before that time, computers were in the hands of experts trained in rational systems development meth-odologies. When computers entered workplaces and homes in the 1980s, systems failed because people could not effectively use their new computers. Systems designers had a very different conceptual model of the system from the workers who used these systems to complete tasks. 1 Software developers turned to cognitive psychology for a solution: the driving design mantras became " ease of use " and " user friendly. " However, many products failed because they did not do what the users wanted or even needed them to do: no amount of massaging the details of the interface could address the fact that computers were often doing the wrong thing. First, the key notion of " task " tied it to behaviors and practices that exist but did not assist designers in imagining what should be. Second, there was a false universalistic belief that all people are the same, and it would be possible to find an optimal interaction solution that would persist forever. Third, this theoretical perspective implied that theory should guide design, which was a hard sell to designers. 2 For reasons like these, new ways to bring research into design were needed. 3 There was a need to bring experimentation and " craft " into design research to more effectively imagine what could and should be. Researchers in the emerging field of 7 Design Research through Practice.

The program we call 'Showroom' builds on art and design rather than on science or on the social s... more The program we call 'Showroom' builds on art and design rather than on science or on the social sciences. When reading the early texts about research programs regarding showrooms, we were struck by critical references to scientific methodology. There is little respect for notions such as data and analysis, and it is possible to encounter outright hostility toward many scientific practices. Research is presented in shop windows, exhibitions, and galleries rather than in books or conference papers. Still, a good deal of the early work was published at scientific venues, most notably human-computer interaction (HCI). This work was aimed at reforming research, which it did to an extent.

A philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos, once argued that progress in research ultimately lies in ... more A philosopher of science, Imre Lakatos, once argued that progress in research ultimately lies in research programs rather than individual studies. 1 Progress happens when some piece of research adds new knowledge to or corrects a research program. A successful research program generates new content and new problems in the long run. Any successful research program also has a negative and a positive heuristic. A negative heuristic consists of a "hard core" of beliefs that is not questioned, and a protective belt of auxiliary hypotheses that can be subjected to debate and can be wrong. A positive heuristic tells which questions and objections are important and in what order they are tackled when they show up (see .1). 2 Lakatos' concept gives us a good understanding of how constructive design research works. For example, we see how it consists of various activities. Some work focuses on theory, some on methods, and some on methodology, whereas the main body of work typically consists of constructive studies, reported in journals, conferences, and exhibitions. Also, we see how people take different roles in research. 3 Figure 3.1 Research runs in programs and has a past: research programs enable imaginative dialogs with the past 3 . Design Research through Practice. 40 Chapter 3 RESEARCH PROGRAMS

Most early writings on design research are built on rationalistic assumptions. Perhaps the most a... more Most early writings on design research are built on rationalistic assumptions. Perhaps the most ambitious call for basing design on rationalistic thinking came from Herbert Simon, who proposed basing design on systems and operations analysis. For him, design became an exercise in mathematics, and the task of design research was to describe the natural and human rationalities that govern it. 1 Such rationalistic assumptions were particularly strong in the 1950s and 1960s. At that time, the studio model of the Bauhaus became too limited to respond to the demands of increasingly complex and growing industries.

iFloor was an interactive floor built between 2002 and 2004 in Aarhus, Denmark. It was a design r... more iFloor was an interactive floor built between 2002 and 2004 in Aarhus, Denmark. It was a design research project with participants from architecture, design, and computer science. It was successful in many ways: it produced two doctoral theses and about 20 peer-reviewed papers in scientific conferences, and led to other technological studies. In 2004, the project received a national architectural prize from the Danish Design Center.

PREFACE The origins of this book are from observations we made a few years ago. It focuses on a s... more PREFACE The origins of this book are from observations we made a few years ago. It focuses on a small but growing slice of design research we call " constructive design research ". There are many types of constructive design research, but only a few approaches have been successful for a decade or more. We call these approaches Lab, Field, and Showroom. They come from different places, with some having roots in universities, some in design firms, some in engineering and the social sciences, and some in contemporary art. As we see it, design research is coming of age. Hundreds of papers have been written about design research and how it should be done. For this reason, any attempt to write about it has to be done as an informative narrative. For us, this informative narrative has been methodology — discussion of abstract principles at work behind actual research. Being abstract helps us to better understand what some of the leading design researchers are doing and why their work makes sense. There are three main reasons for writing this book. First, design has increasingly become a growing academic field. We feel that a bird's eye perspective on it is useful for researchers, professors , and students alike. The second reason is that a PhD is fast becoming an entry criterion for teaching positions; however, this is not how design is traditionally taught: design has been like art, taught by masters to apprentices. The apprenticeship model has guaranteed that designers have sensitivities that are very difficult to put in words. To maintain these sensitivities, professors of the future need design skills, and one way to maintain these skills is to bring design into the middle of research. The third reason for writing this book is to add tolerance. Designers are not traditionally well versed in scientific practice and tend to understand science narrowly. We still hear talks about the scientific method, even though there clearly are many methods. A good deal of astrophysics and geology is not experimental. In contrast, we argue that there is a need for many types of methods and methodologies in design, just as there is a need for many types of methodologies in the sciences and the social sciences. When writing, we have kept in mind MA/MSc and doctoral students in industrial and interaction design, product design engineering, and in such emerging fields of design as services

Foreword ix FOREWORD Twenty-five years ago I was lucky to find a visionary designer willing to ta... more Foreword ix FOREWORD Twenty-five years ago I was lucky to find a visionary designer willing to take a leap of faith in hiring me-a human scientist and researcher. That designer was the legendary Bill Moggridge, who shortly afterwards merged his company with two others to form the global design and innovation consultancy IDEO. My charge was to strengthen IDEO's human-centred approach, and to integrate research with the practice of design. Back then there were few models for me to emulate. If I'd had access to a book like this one, certainly I would have felt more confident in my early endeavours. Design researchers will find this volume an invaluable guide as they navigate the options and challenges of their practice.