Histories of Design Research Failures (original) (raw)

The Redundancy of Design History. (with Guy Julier). 1998

At the inception of art and design as a degree subject in 1961, the 20% of historical and theoretical studies they incorporated was what was meant to give it its Honours status. Traditionally, then, design history, in particular at undergraduate level, has provided the contextualisation for research practice. Meanwhile design history itself has developed as an autonomous academic discipline. This in turn gave rise to the development of design history and the new art history in the early 1970s. By the the early 1980s design history had firmly established itself with the potential to be a stand-alone subject. The result of this development has been that the preoccupations of design historians have increasingly divorced themselves from design practice. Meanwhile, design practice has sought a more complex and challenging set of paradigms. This paper contends that whilst this autonomy may be advantagous for its own terms, it renders the subject no longer viable as either the provider of useful empirical data for or theoretical approaches to design practice and research. In short, design practice both as a field of academic enquiry and as a profession has outstripped the paradigms and critiques of design history. This paper was prompted by conversations with a member of the editorial board of a respected academic journal on design. He was dismayed to find that, according to the research we were presenting to the journal, no amount of radical design history was affecting the on-the-ground experience and practice of design undergraduates... Can the same be said for academic research in design at other levels?

Deconstructing Design Research

The Design Journal

This paper presents a novel conceptual framework for assessing design research projects. Present-day design research is typified by projects, which traverse disciplinary, methodological, and conceptual boundaries that often have wideranging social, cultural, and economic impact to industry, government bodies, and the wider public. Given design's application in addressing serious issues ranging from antimicrobial resistance to mobility, from ageing to migration it can be difficult to understand and unpick the exact nature and scale of design research and the roles that design researchers and designing (both processes and outcomes) play. The design research conceptual framework has been developed as a communicative tool for illustrating levels of design involvement in a project. The paper highlights the design input involved in current design research and provides a comparative measure of design's role in a wide range of projects that fall under the umbrella term of "design research" in the UK.

Design Research – History, theory, practice: histories for future-focused thinking

Writing soon after the 1962 Conference on Design Methods at Imperial College - the event that led to the founding of the Design Research Society in 1966 – J.C. Jones and D.G. Thornley described the Conference’s purpose as twofold. Firstly, the event determined the parameters of a collective agenda and, secondly, it enabled discussions that would catalyse future developments in design methods work (Slann, 1963). On the occasion of the Design Research Society (DRS)’s fiftieth anniversary, this conference strand continues this dialogue with a specific agenda: to assess histories of future-focused thinking and to consider the histories, theories and practices shared between design researchers. What emerges from evaluations of the Design Methods Movement and of Design Research is the continuous search for a common language and common methods and an interest in problem solving, by bringing scientific methods to bear on design. If we understand the history of Design Research in generational terms, this panel suggests a new era: a generation of rigorous interdisciplinary collaboration. This stretches to include practice methods, research, writing and diverse collaborations across academic colleagues from various disciplinary enclaves. Victor Margolin echoed this vanguard at the DRS2010 conference, noting that design research today “pursues its interests based on its own criteria for best practice and meaningful results” (Margolin, 2010, p.1). We interpret this as pursuing meaningful discourse on shared- and dual-inspirational, creative work in design developments. As part of this collaboration we ask: what can design historians contribute to the understanding of design research as a process comprised of history, theory and especially practice? And what can design research contribute to design history’s interest in critical, reflexive and inclusive investigations into past design contexts and developments, in order to ensure sound, future-focused thinking?

Design research – Its 50-year transformation

Design Studies, 2019

Over the past half century, how we conceive of design research has changed significantly, as indeed have the boundaries of influence of the design profession. This paper takes an entirely personal perspective of the author and will discuss the change in the nature of design research through the lens of a career in design education and, especially, in the author's endeavours to develop design research as a respected discipline working with and alongside, science, social sciences and the arts and humanities. It will look at the social, economic and political drivers that have influenced design research in the UK but also globally, and at where this has taken design, in terms of research both within and beyond the design profession.

Design Research: Off the Rails or on the Right Track?

Design Management Journal

If research findings remain unknown, they are unlikely to improve design processes and outcomes. While design scholars have lamented the lack of research utilization by practitioners, some designers have derided their efforts. While scholars have outlined strategies to decrease the research utilization gap, these are largely one-sided suggestions and have lacked widespread implementation and testing. As such, a great deal of information likely remains out of the hands of those who could use it when making decisions that have realworld implications. To determine a common understanding and collective direction surrounding design research utilization, this article synthesizes existing literature from social science, business, and information management, along with relevant findings from two national surveys. Using this evidence, this article proposes a model framed by economics and aimed at decreasing the research utilization gap prevalent in design. It calls for action on the part of both research producers and consumers and highlights specific issues, including topic selection, information translation, dissemination efforts, increasing awareness, value identification, and factors of action. The goal is for all parts of the design community to share in the responsibility for informing each other, thus growing our collective knowledge.

'History as design research and implications for policy-makers'

Design Research and Public Policy (All-Party Parliamentary Design and Innovation Group (APDIG) Term Paper July 2014), 2014

Design research is an academic and practical field of study that seeks to explore the ways in which design in any discipline area is produced, understood, and used. This paper presents some case studies of designers working both at the heart of the government, and whom are making use of new opportunities in procurement processes to undertake design research and offer creative solutions to long-standing policy 'problems'.

DEMYSTIFYING " DESIGN RESEARCH "

In the fields of design, ranging from the arts to technology and computer engineering, the phrase "design research" has numerous uses and meanings. There are many ways (indeed, perhaps an infinite number of ways) that such research can be performed, and many ways that design can manifest "research." This paper compares and contrasts variant approaches to design research practice, as described in recent literature on design, to discuss how design and research both benefit from a holistic understanding of the design research landscape. While practicing designers tend to know exactly what they mean when describing their activities as "research," more rigorously oriented academic or technical researchers are easily confused by the vagaries of design. Moreover, designers do not necessarily take the functional "research value" of traditional research approaches for granted, since despite the theoretical and empirical rigor of these methods they may not actionably address real human needs in meaningful ways.

Design Research: An In-depth Look Investigative Essay

Design, of things with meaning, of artifacts of value, those that persist. Manmade matters, they are not orphaned, but born of need, values, humanity's interaction with its natural and built environment, and its interplay with cultures -"Vernacular Design". 1 Design is the aftermath of knowledge, experience, practice, and science -"High Design". 2 It's a natural human ability to solve problems that entails designing processes. If we have learnt something from history, it is that every relic related to the humankind's progression was a process of planned interactions and thoughts and then reflections; layers of human embodiments that are a consequence of need and purpose. We, the human-beings, are the masters of mental artistry and its manifestation; what Tim Ingold calls it "The Building Perspective". 3 We are the authors of our artifacts and their visualization, their processes, techniques, mechanisms, materials, resources and aims, before even being materialized. For years, it was an enigma to unravel the workings of the master's brain in regards to the design process, to analyze it and then utilize it for the benefit of the collective; this what later came to be Design Research.

Studying Design: Exploring the drivers of design theory and practice

In Time for Change: Building a Design Discipline, design educator Sharon Poggenpohl argues “that design practice and education are changing, particularly in relation to…research and collaboration. If design is to develop as a discipline, it must necessarily develop further based on these themes.”(1) At the center of this development, Poggenpohl continues, is the transformation of the tacit knowledge that designers traditionally employ, to explicit knowledge that is a core asset to cross-disciplinary communication and collaboration. “This is the shortcoming that makes design appear elusive, special, inarticulate, and even unknowable. As long as designers consider themselves to be first and foremost aesthetic finishers of ideas that are well advanced in the development process, they will be trapped by the tacit and unable to provide a clear explanation.”(5) Since Poggenpohl’s call, design discourse has been increasingly focused on this building of explicit, critical knowledge. Designers are no longer comfortable or willing to be the “aesthetic finishers” that Poggenpohl aptly names. But as Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin have argued, much of the evaluation of design has been dictated by those outside of design practice—and in doing so, the focus has leaned to the artifacts that are a result of design practice, rather than the practice itself. In The Idea of Design, Margolin and Buchanan call for an integration of the liberal arts into the evaluation of design — to both broaden the discussion of design evaluation to include that which is focused on the human experience, but also to connect design philosophy and practice (x). This call is in part a response to designs focus on “wicked” problems, and a necessary shift in motivation from what we (as designers) can do, to what we should do. As architectural practice dips into urbanism and visual communication; and as graphic design expands into strategies that involve spaces, places and environments, the ability for students to see across disciplines to find patterns and commonalities as well as differences is increasingly critical. This paper will look at how a cross-disciplinary design studies course for sophomore students at NC State University evaluates design artifacts, environments, experiences and impacts through a series of common, contemporary and critical themes that sit above any specific discipline. By looking at design through its technology, usability, morality, economy, sustainability, and cultural context and impacts, students focus on how design shapes, and is shaped by, the human experience. As a course for non-studio majors, the work in this course can provide insight for studio instructors into how the language and evaluation of design might evolve to include more cross-disciplinary, systems-based perspectives, to help young designers see the work that they do as part of a larger design theory and practice.