An important part of Designerly Research is the exploration of the possible. Throughout the RE-source project the importance of establishing and creating a sense of possibility as a designer becomes more and more clear. However, what do we mean by ‘the possible’?
The possible in this case is not some distant future. It is a ‘possible’ strongly connected to the here and now. Moreover, it is a possible among many possibles that is just in front of us, connected to the present situation and inspired by it. Through the activities of the design researcher this possible future gets made more and more tangible. One of the ways this is done is through what we have called a reflective conversation with the materials of the situation.
It is important to note that this, by definition, is not a possible that springs from the mind of the designer as some genius visionary (a view of the design practice that is far removed from our understanding of it). The possible in our case is more a result of an exploration of a particular constellation of the meshwork that comes about through what we might call empathic engagement or empathic field research. By working on location with the people connected to the here and now and the possible future, a sense of the possible gets articulated and experienced.
An important step towards understanding and eventually tentatively making the possible a reality, is enacting or performing the possible as actuality. Either through prototypes, interventions or enactments, the possible becomes tangible in one shape or another. The possible takes further shape and we gain insights in what it might entail through presenting the possible as experiential (as opposed to presenting it as the solution). In it’s becoming experiential it starts to assemble and gather, it starts carving out a territory and gains momentum of its own.
As a possible gets excavated and takes on shape, it is not the designer who is the expert on that possibile. When the possible moves further towards actuality, the constellation it is a part of grows and learns as it forms around it. This is a generative and mutable process, furthering one instance of a constellation towards a different one. Because the current situation is itself both networked and part of networks, so is this ‘in becoming’ possible. Understanding and helping to bring this possible into being is what a design researcher does. The possible, understood in this sense, stems from a crossing of the real, an actual situation and its constituent practices, and something else -a different practice, lens or frame- that helps imagine a specific possible.
Design activity can be seen as happening in concert or conflict with ‘the things of the world’. Describing the act of design as joining and following the forces and flows of material that bring the form of the work into being, as Ingold describes the art practice (Ingold 2010), puts an emphasis on the idea of interconnection, interrelation and net- or meshworked-ness. Design in this sense is less a process of collecting the previously identified dots and connecting them, but more an improvisational act that is of the order of the event and has a certain emergence to it.
Observing through empathic field research, being on site, following the lines and flows of things and people, is at the core of how we understand the act of Designerly Research. This is not to dismiss the active role of the specific designer or specific actors that form the constellation, the design situation, but rather to point out that it is indeed this particularity that helps to imagine and eventually actualize a possible.
Ingold, T. “Bringing Things to Life: Creative Entanglements in a World of Materials”, Realities Working Papers #15 NCRM Working Paper Series, pp. 1-14.