The disclosive space as an object of study for practice based research in design Dr Sally McLaughlin University of Technology, Sydney, AU <sally.mclaughlin@uts.edu.au>	volume 4 contents journal home page conference home page copyright
		full paper ° abstract
The generation of an artefact or a series of artefacts lies at the heart of most practice based research projects in design 1. This is entirely appropriate given that it coincides with the way that design is practiced as a profession. But does it entail that the object of study of practice based research in design should be the emerging artefact? My argument in this paper is that it may not be of benefit to either the practitioner/researcher or to the domain as a whole to conceive of their task as researchers as one where they are required to validate the artefact(s) as a significant contribution to the domain. I have arrived at this position through reflection on the experience of undertaking a practice based project, the outcome of which was an exhibition. The exhibition was a multimedia installation – Real – a collaboration between myself, a designer, and an artist, Aaron Fry. The project was conceived from the outset as a research project – a research question was posed, a theoretical context proposed and a methodology defined. The project was funded by internal grants from the research committees of two educational institutions. Throughout the process our focus was on the development of an artefact as the outcome. Within the institutional context that we were working, validation of the project involved securing a recognised gallery as a site for exhibiting the artefact. In the course of developing the artefact we gave a number of presentations on the theoretical context that we were exploring and we published a paper on theoretical issues explored through the project (McLaughlin & Fry, 2001). The difficulty that I have with the framework that we adopted in relation to the project is that the activities that we engaged in to validate the outcome did not adequately interrogate the insights that we developed through the project. While we were genuine in our attempts to create an artefact that responded to the relevant theoretical concerns, we failed to understand the nature of the contribution that we could make to our respective domains. It is only in retrospect that I have realised that the potentially transferable knowledge that emerged during the course of this project was not primarily that which was articulated through the artefact. The transferable knowledge was the understanding of the design context that emerged from our exploration of ways of framing that context. Individual decisions about the form of the artefact were meaningful only when considered in the context of that space of possibilities. Validation of the project should have focussed on demonstrating that our understanding of the context was sound. The outcomes of the project would have been much richer if our focus had been on validating the perspectives that we were bringing to the design situation. In the paper that follows I will suggest a theoretical framework for thinking about practice based design research as a form of qualitative inquiry. There are significant differences in the ontological positions taken up by qualitative researchers, so I will enlist the concept of the disclosive space developed by Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus to articulate a position that is consistent with the hermeneutics of Heidegger (1962) and Gadamer (1989). I introduce three categories of validation strategies: internal coherence, external evidence and consultation. I focus on elaborating possible strategies that might be adopted in the pursuit of external evidence. I propose a model of practice based research where the object of study is the disclosive space, the design context, rather than the artefact. I will argue that this model has significant advantages with regard to accessing external evidence that might be used to self-check and self-correct research outcomes. Interrogating the structure of background understanding The term disclosive space is used in the work of Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores and Hubert Dreyfus to refer to the structure that can be found in any domain of culture. They define a disclosive space as an “organized set of practices for dealing with oneself, other people, and things that produces a relatively self contained web of meanings” (Spinosa et al., 1997: 17). The term captures a very specific understanding of ourselves and of how we are in the world. The reference to the act of disclosure, is an attempt to recover an understanding of ourselves as the locus of an opening onto the world. This opening allows aspects of the world to show up for us in particular ways. The reference to disclosure is an acknowledgment of the fact that we are always already oriented towards the world. It is only through already being oriented toward the world that anything in the world can show up for us. The reference to a space is interesting in that it evokes a sense of the physicality of our access to the world. Our understanding of the world is an embodied understanding. We must always adopt a particular vantage point. The space of the world can only ever open up to us from a particular point of view. Space is not mere emptiness. It is dependent on some form of articulation. A disclosive space is articulated by socially defined practices. Here again it might be useful to think of these practices in physical terms, as patterns of speaking, acting, and carrying out our lives that are taken over from our culture, that shape who we are, that shape our encounters with the world. Dreyfus (1991: 17) contrasts the child rearing practices of a Japanese mother to those of an American mother. The Japanese mother “does a great deal of lulling, carrying, and rocking of her baby. She seems to soothe and quiet the child, and to communicate to him physically rather than verbally. On the other hand, the American (mother)…does more looking at and chatting to her baby. She seems to stimulate the baby to activity and vocal response. It is as if the American mother wanted to have a vocal, active baby and the Japanese mother wanted to have a quiet, contented baby” (Caudill & Weinstein cited in Dreyfus op cit: 17). The point here is that we take up practices from those available to us in our culture by being attentive to physical phenomenon such as gestures and postures, tone of voice, and pace of activity. These taken over practices will determine, not only how it is that we will be in the world, but also how we perceive the world. Members of a culture raised in the way that the Japanese baby has been raised are likely to perceive Americans as loud and boisterous, possibly even aggressive. The two styles of being in the world have implications for how the world is perceived. What is important about Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus' concept of the disclosive space is that it presents a model of understanding that, despite being highly structured, is inherently non-representational. Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus build on Heidegger's insight that understanding is not a matter of having representations of the world in mind. Understanding is an orientation towards the world, shaped by practices that have been taken over largely unawares. It is the nature of background practices that they cannot be spelt out. They cannot be made explicit in representations. They manifest themselves as orientations that we bring to the world and as a compulsion to adjust our orientations in a specific direction. While we cannot capture those orientations as representations it is possible to develop written descriptions, diagrams, and artefacts that draw attention to aspects of those practices. Bringing to the fore aspects of the structure of our background understanding is a task for qualitative research. Qualitative research focuses on the elicitation of meaning. For many qualitative researchers this amounts to identifying a range of conceptions of a situation (Bowden and Green, 2005). From a hermeneutic perspective this might be characterised as identifying a space of possibilities, a space of live options that are both created and constrained by constellations of background practices. If we accept that our understanding is for the most part non-representational – that understanding is not primarily a matter of having representations of the world in mind – then we must recognise the need for techniques for interrogating our background understanding. In Being and Time Heidegger (1962) explores the structure of our understanding of equipment by observing what shows up for us in situations where equipment breaks down. A growing number of qualitative researchers (Lakoff, 1996; Lakoff and Johnson, 1980; Forceville, 1996; Schmitt, 2005) are employing metaphor analysis as a tool for understanding the metaphorical structure of attitudes and values. Interventions referred to as cultural probes have been designed to elicit information about needs and desires (Gaver et al, 1999; Mattelmaki, 2005). Speculative artefacts have significant potential to act as cultural probes. An example developed in conversation with a colleague at the University of Technology, Sydney, may help to clarify this point. Berto Pandolfo is an industrial designer with an interest in adapting the manufacturing techniques of light industry to the design of decorative furniture and objects. Pandolfo began his investigation into a proposed series of works titled Crumple by exploring the possibilities of working with sheet metal in the context of furniture design. Pandolfo was interested in this material as it is widely used in the construction of ventilation and air conditioning ducts, it is readily available, inexpensive, and the skills required to work with the material are well developed in the Australian manufacturing industry. In the process of exploring the potential of the material Pandolfo developed a number of maquettes (small three dimensional models). When confronted with the physicality of the maquettes he found himself drawn to those that were highly irregular. He gradually developed an understanding that he was rejecting the maquettes that were regular in structure because they were symmetrical and 'furniture is (almost) always symmetrical' (Pandolfo personal communication). The construction of the maquettes revealed symmetry as an issue. It raises interesting questions about the structure of values surrounding conventions of symmetry. This might include metaphors relating to the body and order and/or investigations of the possibilities of particular production techniques, transportation, handling and day to day use. For Pandolfo it raised issues about the 'sense of security in form' associated with minimalism in design. The conversation, reflection and action that occurs in response to the generation of sketches, maquettes and prototypes has the potential to form the basis for understanding perspectives and practices relevant to design domains. As far as I am aware, this aspect of the potential of practice based design research has not been adequately recognised. One final point should be made about Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus' concept of the disclosive space. The disclosive space is introduced in the context of developing an account of the conditions of cultural change. Spinosa Flores and Dreyfus discuss three mechanisms by which cultural change is achieved: articulation, reconfiguration and cross-appropriation. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to adequately describe these mechanisms, all three change the way that the world is disclosed to us by actively intervening in the organised sets of practices that constitute an existing disclosive space(s). I am proposing that it is a legitimate task for the practitioner-researcher to investigate the structure of relevant customary and emergent disclosive spaces. 2 In the situation where the object of study of a practice based research project is the artefact, the practitioner-researcher is placed in the position where he/she is required to argue that the artefacts developed in the course of a practice based research project are in themselves world-making. In the following section I will propose an alternative framework that avoids this onerous condition. Validation Strategies in qualitative research There are significant discrepancies in the terminology and criteria used to evaluate qualitative research. I will contextualize my discussion of evaluation by introducing three broad categories of criteria loosely based on those developed by Packer and Addison (cited in Elliot et al. 1999). First, there are criteria relating to the internal coherence of the research. This might include consideration of the appropriateness of the research methods to the situation, consideration of the credibility of data, the grounding of interpretations in data, sampling, saturation, and the internal consistency of the interpretations drawn from the data. Second there are criteria relating to external evidence. The most common mechanism employed to meet this criteria is triangulation of data through the use of multiple research methods. A second mechanism is to compare findings with existing alternative perspectives. Third, there are criteria relating to internal and external consultation with regard to all of the above. This might include member checks, achieving consensus within a research team and external audits. In the context of practice led research, securing an exhibition or other form of competitive publication of outcomes might be seen as a form of consensus with regard to the quality of the outcomes. In the remainder of this section I will focus on the second category of criteria – criteria relating to external evidence. Consideration of the issue of how it is that the practitioner/researcher is going to find external corroborating evidence has significant implications for the design of practice based research projects. In particular, I will argue that the form of verification required is determined by decisions about the object of study of the project. Before pursuing this link, however, I will elaborate on possible strategies that might be adopted to establish that the research findings are congruent with external evidence if the researcher accepts the ontological assumptions of hermeneutics. On the hermeneutical account, understanding is structured by background practices. Whilst sets of practices may be configured in ways that belong uniquely to an individual, they are not merely idiosyncratic. The practices that are taken up by an individual are taken over from our culture. The shared nature of these practices is what makes triangulation possible. The practices that constitute our background understanding are relatively stable. It is inevitable that they will manifest themselves in multiple ways. For example, George Lakoff (1996) has explored ways in which the metaphorical concepts of the strong father family and the nurturant parent family shape the politics of the right and left. Evidence of each metaphorical concept are evident in language, actions and stated beliefs and values. The concepts manifest themselves in attitudes toward areas as diverse as education, gender relations and the environment. If a practice is a live option in a culture then it should be expected that there will be multiple manifestations of that practice in that culture. It is important to note, however, that this does not amount to a claim that all members of a cultural group will speak, act, or have the same relationship to artefacts as other members of that group. Individual members of the group will take up the practices available to them to varying degrees in a variety of ways. What it does amount to is a claim that the range of possibilities with in a culture will be constrained by configurations of sets of practices that are available to that culture. Hermeneutics provides theoretical validation for the emphasis that qualitative researchers, many of whom come from a constructivist position, place on identifying a range of conceptions of situations (Bowden & Green 2005). Gathering external evidence that a particular conception of a situation is a live option in a culture is a matter of triangulating the research findings (finding multiple manifestations of that conception within the culture) whilst acknowledging and interrogating alternative conceptions. Triangulation is a well accepted form of external interrogation but there exists another option that underpins the presentation of many research outcomes but does not seem to be widely acknowledged as a validation strategy. Gadamer (1989: 374-375) has developed the concept of fusion of horizons to explain how it is possible that we can change our perspective through engaging in conversation with another person. Gadamer observes that we can only make sense of their point of view if we project into the situation an already existing understanding of the subject being discussed. Gadamer (1989: 269) has also observed that it is often only after we have shifted from an initial perspective, through engagement with a text, or through conversation with another person, that we become aware of preconceptions that were implicit in that initial perspective. It is only by moving away from the initial perspective that aspects of the original perspective that were operating in advance of conscious awareness come to light. Gadamer's astute characterisation of the possibilities and limitations that show up when we shift our understanding points to an important mechanism for validation through corroboration with external data. A new perspective will be a viable alternative conception of a situation if it shows up genuine possibilities and limitations of existing perspectives. The new perspective should be considered to have merit if it is compared to alternative perspectives and can be shown to be instrumental in bringing to the fore possibilities and limitations not previously recognised. I am currently working on a project looking at communication issues associated with water management in NSW, Australia. I am working with an interdisciplinary team of visual communication designers, scientists, a sociologist and an economist. One of the interesting features of the situation is that the scientists seem to be preoccupied with returning the rivers to their natural state while at the same time implicitly acknowledging that this is not likely to happen. Another feature of the situation is that interventions designed to help preserve river health are often stymied because the outcomes are less certain than those directed towards industrial or agricultural uses. In the existing communication materials rivers systems are represented either as nature or as resource. The design team are exploring ways in which we might represent the river systems as a material, fabric or system that is designed. Part of our task as practitioner/ researchers will be to document the possibilities and limitations shown up by this form of representation as compared to the existing representations of river systems as nature or river systems as resource. The merit or otherwise of this approach to representation depends on whether it shows up anything of interest about the previous conventional perspectives. I return now to a consideration of how the need to identify external corroborating evidence might impact on the design of a practice based design research project. Orienting practice based research towards the revelation of aspects of a relevant disclosive space is a significant alternative to models of practice based research where the focus is on the artefact. Where the object of study is the disclosive space, the practitioner-researcher would make claims about the structure of the relevant disclosive space and would describe the ways in which their research findings support these claims. Artefacts produced in the course of the research would play two roles: first, as probes for interrogating the disclosive space; and second, as a form of articulation of the position that the designer elects to take in relation to the disclosive space. This is very different to the external validation that would be required in a project if the object of study were the artefact. Where the object of study is the artefact the researcher must show that the object itself is a significant contribution to the knowledge of the domain. The speculative artefact must be a world making artefact. The researcher must show that the artefact opens up new ways of revealing the world. Speculative artefacts are by their nature new. The opportunity to verify the existence of an emergent disclosive space is limited, at best, because it takes time for an artefact to become embedded in a set of practices. Furthermore, I am not sure that the objective of practice based research in design should necessarily be the development of world-making artefacts. It may be sufficient to develop artefacts that engage in constructive ways with customary practices. Where the object of study is the artefact the practice based researcher is drawn into validation exercises that do not draw on the expertise that is most central to their practice. The model that I propose is to develop case studies that advance the understanding of the domain by bringing to the fore a practitioner's insights about the design situation and interrogating those insights by considering them in relation other forms of external evidence. This is not to say that the artefact does not play an important role in the model proposed. The artefact is the locus of actions taken, and decisions made, in the context of the relevant disclosive space. The artefact becomes the object around which the disclosure is organised. Insights about the disclosive space are generated through a process of interrogating that space through the proposition of various forms of the artefact. The speculative forms and the resulting insights are integrally connected. Documentation of those forms, and of what they reveal, is central to articulating insights about the disclosive space. Evaluation of the form of the artefact should be seen as equivalent to evaluating the appropriateness of forms of written expression. The practitioner/researcher should not be required to verify the artefact as a response to the newly articulated understanding of the disclosive space. They would, instead, be positing the artefact as a plausible position to take in response to the newly defined understanding of that space. I should also point out the difference between the model proposed in this paper and models of practice based research where the object of study is the process of designing an artefact. Where the object of study is the process of designing an artefact, validation would involve confronting the issue of whether or not that was what the designer was really doing or thinking. The practitioner/researcher is drawn into territory that is more properly the domain of cognitive scientists, social science researchers or psychologists. Interrogating a disclosive space and documenting the insights generated is a very different mode of activity. It is no longer important when an insight came to the practitioner – it might have developed in concert with the generation of a particular speculative form, it might have emerged in conversation with a client, it may have come to the fore after reading an article or engaging in dialogue with a peer. The formation of the insight is unimportant. It is the articulation and examination of the insight that is important. Validation is no longer a matter of verifying that this is what I really did or that this is what I really thought. Instead it becomes a matter of verifying that there is evidence that this aspect of the situation that seems interesting to me, the individual practitioner/researcher, shows up interesting possibilities and limitations of established perspectives in the domain; my insight into this aspect of the situation is not purely idiosyncratic but is a live option within the design context. Conclusion My aim in this paper has been to consider issues relating to the design of practice based design research projects if these projects are conceived as being a form of qualitative research. The ontological position from which qualitative research is undertaken covers a broad spectrum from positivism to constructivism. I have drawn on terminology developed by Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus – in particular their use of the term disclosive space – to raise issues relevant to qualitative research from a position that is consistent with the hermeneutics of Heidegger and Gadamer. Hermeneutics can be distinguished from positivism in that it acknowledges that the only access that we can have to the world is perspectival. There is no outside objective position from which evaluation of claims about the world can be made. Hermeneutics distinguishes itself from constructivism in that it acknowledges the structure and relative stability that our background understanding exerts on perspectives that are possible. I work from the assumption that there is value for the domain of design and for individual practitioners in engaging in practice based research. I also assume that the development of an artefact or a series of artefacts will lie at the heart of practice based design research projects. The model that I propose is one where the shift from practitioner to practitioner/researcher might be conceived as a shift from a state where the practitioner proceeds with an implicit, tacit understanding of the design situation to one where the practitioner/researcher actively interrogates and validates their understanding of relevant aspects of that design situation. The development of an artefact or series of artefacts is instrumental in bringing to light relevant aspects of the situation (determining problems for practice); interrogating the background understandings that constitute the aspects of the disclosive space under study; and articulating a position in relation to the findings of the study. Undertaking design practice as a form of research offers the practitioner/researcher the opportunity to clarify and explore their understanding of the design context by adapting and developing approaches and frameworks that qualitative research methods afford. My objective in this paper has been to show that the application of these methods has implications in terms of determining the focus of the study. In particular I have attempted to show that the phenomenon under investigation must have sufficient stability, that it must be sufficiently integrated into customary or emergent sets of practices, for techniques of external validation through the identification of corroborating evidence to be applied. Practice based research is, as yet, an emerging mode of research in art and design. While we should not simply appropriate the frameworks and norms of more established forms of qualitative research there are a number of important principles that the practice based researcher should take seriously. First, is the need to be clear about the ontological position from which the practitioner/researcher is operating. It is difficult, if not impossible to interrogate standards of validation without understanding the ontological position from which those standards arise. Second, is the recognition that there are at least three categories of validation that need to be developed and explored: internal coherence, external evidence and consultation. Finally, there is the need to understand that the selection of the object of study for a project has significant implications with regard to the availability of external evidence to interrogate research findings. Endnotes  1  In this paper the term practice is used to describe ideas drawn from two different contexts. This cannot be avoided as it in a key term in both contexts. The first use is as a component of the term practice based research. Practice based research refers to forms of research where the professional practice of the practitioner/researcher in fields such as art and design, medicine or business, constitutes a significant of the research methodology. The second use of the term is taken from Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus (Spinosa et al., 1997) and earlier work by Hubert Dreyfus (1991). Here the term practice is used to describe socially inscribed patterns of activity that shape our understanding of the world.  2  Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus distinguish between customary and historical disclosing. A customary disclosive space is an organised set of practices that allows the world to show up for us in ways that are familiar to us, ways that are familiar to our style of perceiving the world. Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus illustrate the concept of a customary disclosive space by comparing the way in which driving shows up for the seasoned New York driver as compared to a driver from the American mid-West. On their account, the New York driver is attuned to their environment in such a way that “Every other car on the road and every driver is a challenge to be surmounted. In New York, drivers feel themselves to be in a race, and all obstacles in the way of winning show up as irritating” (Spinosa et al, op. cit: 21). On the other hand “mid western drivers...see no reason for any tension in driving. What counts in driving is what they notice happening along the side of the road…Other cars are not noticed unless their drivers request an act of kindness, which drivers are happy to perform” (Spinosa et al, ibid: 21) Historical disclosing amounts to cultural change. One example given by Spinosa et al (Spinosa et al, ibid: 25) is the change in attitudes towards management of resources that was entailed by the replacement of animal power with machine power. Animals needed to be governed. Machines are controlled. Spinosa, Flores and Dreyfus conclude “Once machine tools took over…the dominant Western Style changed from governing to controlling…People control electric saws, power plants, chemical reactions, and so on. Rather than govern their sexual desires, people now control birth and the transmission of disease.” (Spinosa et al, ibid: 25) References Bowden, J. & Green, P. 2005 Doing Developmental Phenomenology, Melbourne: RMIT University Press. Dreyfus, H. L. 1991 Being in the World: A commentary on Heidegger's Being and Time, Division 1. Cambridge Mass.: MIT Press. Elliott, R., Fischer, C.T. & Rennie, D.L. 1999 'Evolving guidelines for publication of qualitative research studies in psychology and related fields', The British Journal of Clinical Psychology. Vol. 28, No. 3, 215–229. Forceville, C. 1996 Pictorial Metaphor in Advertising. London: Routledge. Gaver, B., Dunne, T. & Pacenti, E. 1999 'Design: Cultural Probes', Interactions. Vol 6. No.1 21–29. 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