Some Notes on Programme-Experiment Dialectics

Abstract

Searching for ways of conducting practice-based design research, we have explored an approach based on the formulation of design programmes as a foundation and framework for carrying out design experiments. Over the years, we have presented a number of such programmes along with experiments that explore and express their potential. There are, however, some methodological issues in this way of working that are rarely addressed. One such set of issues pertains to what we might refer to as a programme–experiment dialectics, that is, how the research process unfolds over time as programme and experiments influence, challenge and transform each other. In what follows, aspects of this dialectic will be discussed with focus on issues such as how such a process is initiated, how the unfolding of the research process depends on both stabilisation and drift, and what it means to say that such a process comes to a closure.