The other day I was afforded the opportunity to interview Christian Madsbjerg, director of ReD Associates’ New York office, about the ways in which applied research can practically discover, articulate and address meaning. What I find particularly interesting is his background in philosophy which profoundly informs the methods and approach of the work at ReD. I’ve been persistently concerned by the importance of addressing issues of epistemology and causality in framing design problems, especially as they relate to observing how people understand their actions, each other and their environment and how this ultimately affects their behavior. Christian’s stressing ontology as foundational -particularly Heideggerian ontology – really got me thinking. In framing design problems, I believe it is essential to understand that users’ behaviors and actions are ultimately dependent upon their ordinal and subjective arrangements of preferences per their perceptions, cognition and evaluation.
Central to this process, though, is ontology. One’s notion of identity and being, broadly considered, plays a pivotal role in the cognitive processes guiding purposive and communicative action. We see this in Goffman’s and Garfinkel’s work, of course, though it is something I hadn’t yet been explicitly aware of in philosophical terms- I had taken it for granted, left it unexamined when encountered and consequently sequestered it from its central role in practice. For shame! For me, this reminder is revolutionary.
Interestingly enough, I had failed to appreciate that this aspect is, in fact, addressed to some degree in Lucy Kimball’s workshop noted below- though, as I note, without what I consider sufficient emphasis placed upon the relationship of causality and epistemology with regard to users’ actions as a synthesis of emically and etically articulated motivations. Nonetheless, ontological considerations are clearly appreciated, even if rendered inert. [‘I am’ (o) so ‘I do’ (a)]
Moving forward toward a coherent design process, we might consider that understanding users requires understanding user actions (a) as caused (c) by ontologically (o) informed intention (c) qualified by epistemological premises (e).
[‘I am’ (o), ‘so I do’ (a) ‘because I believe’ (c/e) that ‘what I do’ (a) ‘is an appropriate expression of ‘who I am’ (o)]
This is a really rough schematic of course, but it helps me categorize and arrange user data into a well rounded picture. (I still think the ‘because I believe’ is most critical- it captures both epistemology and causality. A researcher needs to ask Why and How? does one believe.)
