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A critique of the representationalist framing of design

Tahsiri, Mina

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Abstract

This paper brings attention to the chronological developments in a strand of design research that aimed at demystifying the characteristics and nature of design through what will be argued to have been predominantly a representationalist framework. It discusses how the uncritical acceptance and combination of some of the concepts that have come to be attributed to design (design as an ill-structured, reflective-in-action and ambiguous activity) can contribute to a rather narrow understanding of design- one which reduces the temporal-cultural fluidity of design in how design(ing) is conceptualised; and how the role and intrinsic properties of the frameworks that are used to study design themselves are overlooked in the concepts that are subsequently attributed to the nature of design. The paper maps the research paradigms and core concepts pertinent to this line of design research against a classification of cognition theories in providing a critique of its framing of design knowledge.

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Oct 21, 2021
Online Publication Date Jun 12, 2022
Deposit Date Jul 2, 2022
Publicly Available Date Jul 4, 2022
Journal Design Journal
Print ISSN 1460-6925
Electronic ISSN 1756-3062
Publisher Taylor & Francis (Routledge)
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 25
Issue 4
Pages 617-635
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/14606925.2022.2083293
Keywords design research; design knowledge; design theory; ill-structure; reflection-in-action; ambiguity; representationalism
Public URL https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/9661055
Publisher URL https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14606925.2022.2083293

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/

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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Copyright Statement
Copyright 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed,or built upon in any way.





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