Permission to Muck About, Knowledge, and the Grammar of Intuition

This paper reports on the process of making Permission to Muck About, a documentary film that explores the value of Design Research. It contrasts how science, design, art, and craft make knowledge. Before long, the film confronts the question of how we know anything at all and what mechanisms drive our assessments of the quality, originality, validity, rigour, and relevance of our research. While the answers to these questions are plural and fluid, characterised by the tensions of consensus/dissensus and healthy discussion/unhealthy derision, the challenge of navigating this landscape can frustrate and suppress great research. Based on a wide range of interviews, field research, and the creative process of crafting a coherent narrative, the film explores an often-hidden grammar of intuition, it frames a deep-rooted but under-exposed reliance on tacit knowledge and practical experience, and it concludes with an assertion that our research community—and the world in general—could benefit from a minor readjustment in the overarching epistemic commitments; we need more permission to muck about.