Building on Sanders' 'Design Research Dimensions', 2008

If we identify ourselves as designers working in the public sphere and for the public interest, we must operate simultaneously as insiders and outsiders, as speculators and social scientists. Additionally our research methods must expand to include a diversity of perspectives and a multiplicity of lenses to understand the intricate systems comprising place. This paper outlines methods outside of our current design toolbox to expand research approaches through mapping as an analytical, synthetic and formative process. Specifically, it investigates the ability of mapping to translate research and data into critical visualization and propositional tools. Through a cross-disciplinary graduate level seminar, we explored and applied diverse community engagement and research methodologies borrowed from landscape architecture, architecture, graphic design, and the social sciences. Mapping techniques were used to introduce students to research methods as cumulative, analytical and formative investigations. Students began researching local neighborhoods through the traditional methods of historical archives and GIS based data to uncover patterns in the built and social environment. From these insights, students were prompted to investigate and derive measurements of cultural, economic, political, and ecological forces precipitating those patterns. After extensive data-based research, students were then challenged to engage the community’s perception and understanding of those systems through the design and implementation of a culture probe. Pedagogically each method of information gathering was linked to different cartographic techniques which in turn generated a variety of geo-spatial, cognitive, and phenomenological visualizations of place. Through this course structure, we found an increased investment on the part of the students to uncover and understand the complexities of place.

Canadian Journal of Communication, 2006

Design Studies

Informing Science: The International Journal of an Emerging Transdiscipline, 2020

Aim/Purpose: To discuss the Design Science Research approach by comparing some of its canons with observed practices in projects in which it is applied, in order to understand and structure it better. Background: Recent criticisms of the application of the Design Science Research (DSR) approach have pointed out the need to make it more approachable and less confusing to overcome deficiencies such as the unrealistic evaluation. Methodology: We identified and analyzed 92 articles that presented artifacts developed from DSR projects and another 60 articles with preceding or subsequent actions associated with these 92 projects. We applied the content analysis technique to these 152 articles, enabling the preparation of network diagrams and an analysis of the longitudinal evolution of these projects in terms of activities performed and the types of artifacts involved. Contribution: The content analysis of these 152 articles enabled the preparation of network diagrams and an analysis of t...

2009

Design research is an academic issue and increasingly an essential success factor for industrial, organizational and social innovation. The fierce rejection of 1st generation design methods in the early 1970s resulted in the postmodernist attitude of "no methods", and subsequently, after more than a decade, in the strong adoption of scientific methods, or "the" scientific method, for design research. The current situation regarding methodology is characterized by unproductive dualisms such as scientific methods vs. designerly methods, normative methods vs. descriptive methods, research vs. design. The potential of the early (1st generation) methods is neglected and the practical usefulness of design research is impeded. The suggestion for 2nd generation methods as discussed by Rittel and others has hardly been taken up in design. The development of a methodological tool / medium for research through design – MAPS – (which is the central part of the paper) present...

Design Science, 2022

The diversity of design research studies and their associated methods and reporting style make it difficult for the design research community of practice to leverage its work into further advancing the field. We illustrate how a structured multilevel analysis of diverse studies creates a canonical model that allows for the transfer of insight between studies, enhances their comprehension, and supports improved study designs. The benefits of such an approach will increase if different stakeholders adopt such structured approaches to enrich the design research community of practice.

Revista Brasileira de História da Educação, 2024

A crescente preocupação da comunidade científica em compreender a história do ensino das Ciências Sociais tem sido significativa nos últimos anos, considerando os pesquisadores vinculados tanto às Ciências Sociais quanto à Educação. Esse interesse em expansão é evidenciado por diversos indicadores, incluindo: a) a persistência de Grupos de Trabalhos voltados para esse tópico nos principais eventos da área; b) o aumento significativo da produção acadêmica dedicada ao tema por meio de teses, dissertações, artigos em periódicos, livros e coletâneas.

Keith's Newsletter on Substack, 2024

This is a much improved version of 'The political economy of food in an unequal world, posted recently. **** Food is the main obstacle to the achievement of a world economy that serves general human interests. This is because our institutions are still those of agrarian civilization now strengthened by the addition of machines. The rebellion of the money-making middle classes against landed military power—itself an echo of the thousand years war in the ancient Mediterranean before Rome settled the outcome—stalled in the mid-19th century when the two main classes made a reactionary alliance based on a merger of industrial capitalism and nation-states. The resulting inequality led to imperialism, two world wars and the economic crises of the 1930s and 1970s. Western farmers after 1945 ensured that agricultural subsidies fed by tax-rich states excluded non-western farmers from their own and world markets, thereby stalling a progressive rural-urban division of labor there, especially in Africa. Arthur Lewis claimed that resolving the food question would require a world revolution. The essay takes a very long-run view of the history of this problem and concludes that the struggle for supremacy between money and war has not yet been decided. Its main theme is the interdependence of urban and rural areas, of society and nature—in global and national economic development, and as a circulatory way of life within and between countries. ****1. Introduction: the problem of development: 2. Agriculture in human evolution' 3. Agrarian civilization and national capitalism; 4. Updating Steuart’s “mercantilist” vision today; 5. Origins of the neoliberal economic crisis; 6. Food in a new economic order: general reflections and specific recommendations.

Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Unit with Data Quality Assurance and Knowledge Management(KM)