The Future of Heuristic Fossils

Abstract

The authors propose that while many fields of design are involved in reflexive interactions with design research tools, others are strongly heuristic in both their application of historic knowledge bases and in the ways in which they allow themselves to move forward, to construct new knowledge as an extension of craft thinking with user-centred evidence. These historical frames become a limiting factor in both the ways that practice can develop but also, more worryingly, in the ways in which these fields can develop their own research tools.