CEPHAD 2010 // The borderland between philosophy and design research // Copenhagen //
January 26th – 29th, 2010 // Regular table session
Dr. Ian Coxon // PhD.; B.Ind Des. (Hons 1st class); B.Mkt. // Human Centred Design Institute // Brunel University, London // School of Design, Architecture and Building //
University of Technology Sydney // Ian.coxon(a)uts.edu.au
Introduction
“Ian Coxon’s PhD necessitated the development of new research methods and new forms of qualitative analysis to help us understand why certain forms of personal transport were less than successful. He demonstrated that success related directly to the experience of using these forms of transport. Because experience is felt it cannot be quantified (attempts to do this flatten the results), so while qualitative analysis is the best method of analysing experience it still generates suspicion (how can we trust what we can only see!). Coxon overcame our rational tendency to invalidate qualities and produced two remarkable new research tools – a taxonomy of experience (ToE) and the SEEing process”
Professor Joseph Giacomin, Human Centred Design Institute, Brunel University, London.
Research question
Hermeneutical phenomenology has shown to be helpful in understanding meta-physical aspects of human experience for design – can existential phenomenology also be useful in helping to understand the physical side of human experience in new ways – and could a combination of these two understandings of lived experience lead to new avenues of truly human centred design?
Background
This proposal is based on an earlier project utilizing hermeneutical phenomenology to understand the experience of New Mobility Vehicles1 (NMVs). Field research was conducted in Europe with designers and drivers of NMVs. The most interesting outcomes from the research (other than vehicle related findings) were two new research methods; the first being useful for the modeling of everyday experiences (ToE) and the second for deep analysis of qualitative textual data (SEEing).
The Taxonomy of Experience (ToE): A model of experience
This hierarchical model is useful to researchers and decision makers as a general method or tool for guiding the collection, processing and categorisation of qualitative field data about an everyday experience. It utilizes a meta-structure of experience based on Sensorial,
Affective, Cognitive and Contextual factors2 within which there are further sub-themes and themes.
1New Mobility Vehicles are small vehicles designed to satisfy new urban patterns and modes of personal transport
2Bazeley, P. 2007, Qualitative data analysis with NVivo, Sage Publications, London.
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // Coxon The ToE effectively provides a fluid ‘check list’ for studying any experience that a researcher wishes to understand and provides a starting point for categorization or coding of data in qualitative analysis.
SEEing: A multi-level qualitative data analysis method
This method employs nine sequential steps through which information contained in the ToE of an experience being studied, is reduced by a process that allows a researcher to see the meta-physical3 ‘essences’ within the experience. The SEEing processes distil and make visible the strongest and deepest layers of meaning that uniquely define the experience for what it is.
Utilising methodological theory from both Phenomenology and Hermeneutics it provides a semi-logical (fuzzy) process of reducing volumes of qualitative data in such a way that not only is deep meta-physical understanding explicated about the experience studied but there is also evidence of a significant transformative effect within the researcher applying it. The research projects4 developed so far have focused on the value gained from the meta-physical component of the experience and in this conference proposal I suggest that the potential within an existential insight may have been overlooked. By addressing this we have the possibility of not only gaining interesting new perspectives on the event but a
philosophical elegance might be achieved if this new understanding is re-combined with the meta-physical component, such that a third entity might be evolved.
Position paper - Table session proposal:
The research question proposed for discussion at this conference is intended to explore an extension of the design research methods (ToE and SEEing) developed in earlier research.
These methods have since been employed in the academic sphere to answer design questions across many disciplines. The methods have been found to be useful in qualitative research particularly at the data gathering and analysis stages, as they assist a researcher to structure an approach to ‘seeing’ within an everyday experience such that the meta-physical or more Authentic (Heideggarian) aspects of the experience can be ‘seen’. The research work done so far while useful in making these meta-physical layers more visible has not fully explored the physical (form, functional, contextual - existential) aspects of the experience, that have been internalized by human and other sources in the experience but are reflected in the research material derived from them.
At this conference I would like to discuss the proposition that an existential
phenomenological approach might offer useful ways to explore this untapped layer of experience, in quite a different way to the ‘user’ studies applied in contemporary design. I suggest that this layer within human lived experience if viewed existentially might offer new forms of understanding for a designer to draw upon.
I further propose for discussion that these two streams of philosophical understanding based in lived experience (Existential and Hermeneutical); having common foundations in
phenomenology, hint at a sympathetic partnership that may be two halves of a greater understanding. I am firstly a design thinker and have at best a working understanding of
3The term ‘meta-physical’ is used in this situation to mean those aspects of the experience that are beyond or over and above physical factors within the experience.
4 Trials of these methods have been successfully conducted in Australia and Germany with students in interdisciplinary design courses from undergraduate to graduate levels.
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // Coxon Heidegger and Gadamers hermeneutical phenomenology. My basic understanding of existential phenomenology is not sophisticated enough to artfully investigate these questions on my own. The questions I would like the conference delegates help to explore are these;
can existential phenomenology be useful in understanding the physical side of an authentic human experience (as partially explicated within the SEEing process) in new ways?, and could the Existential and Hermeneutical understandings of a lived experience so developed lead to new avenues of truly human centred design. I believe that conference delegates having diverse strengths in linguistics, design theory or existential phenomenology will find this topic as challenging and interesting as I do.
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Copenhagen Working Papers on Design // 2010 // No. 1 // De Clercq Strandboulevarden 47 Tel +45 35 27 75 00 DK- 2100 Copenhagen Ø Fax +45 35 77 76 00
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