Hi Lars
I am also working in an area where many areas of research potentially intersect (dissemination of health care evidence), but where there seems to be little referencing across the research domains I have found to be relevant. I would also be curious to hear what the discussion-list educators have to say about this (but it seems they're all busy discussing and defending visual representation these days). Is this a typical design-researcher problem? Are there well-known strategies for dealing with this in a dissertation context? I think the phd is possibly a daunting place to be criss-crossing research domains, as it is precisely expertise in one area that seems to be the whole point. I would appreciate knowledgeable comments about this dilemma.

Back to Lars: As for researchers focusing on the same subject matter from their multiple and isolated viewpoints, I've come a literature review in the IT field you might find compelling. It provides an overview of how researchers from different domains (including design) have studied electronic patient records. The authors describe not only how the methodology has differed across domains, but also the way the subject matter is conceptualized from the outset, affecting the both questions that are asked and results that emerge. This is an extraordinary piece of work and not only highlights some of the kind of territory you find yourself in, but is compelling reading for anyone interested in scientific epistomologies. 

Here it the abstract and reference:

Tensions and Paradoxes in Electronic Patient Record Research: A Systematic Literature Review Using the Meta-narrative Method

TRISHA GREENHALGH, HENRY W.W. POTTS, GEOFF WONG, PIPPA BARK, and DEBORAH SWINGLEHURST

CONTEXT: The extensive research literature on electronic patient records (EPRs) presents challenges to systematic reviewers because it covers multiple research traditions with different underlying philosophical assumptions and methodological approaches.
METHODS: Using the meta-narrative method and searching beyond the Medline indexed literature, this review used “conflicting” findings to address higher order questions about how researchers had differently conceptualized and studied the EPR and its implementation.
FINDINGS: Twenty-four previous systematic reviews and ninety-four further primary studies were considered. Key tensions in the literature centered on (1) the EPR (“container” or “itinerary”); (2) the EPR user (“information-processer” or “member of socio-technical network”); (3) organizational context (“the setting within which the EPR is implemented” or “the EPR-in-use”); (4) clinical work (“decision making” or “situated practice”); (5) the process of change (“the logic of determinism” or “the logic of opposition”); (6) implementation success (“objectively
defined” or “socially negotiated”); and (7) complexity and scale (“the bigger the better” or “small is beautiful”).
CONCLUSIONS: The findings suggest that EPR use will always require human input to recontextualize knowledge; that even though secondary work (audit, research, billing) may be made more efficient by the EPR, primary clinical work may be made less efficient; that paper may offer a unique degree of ecological flexibility; and that smaller EPR systems may sometimes be more efficient and effective than larger ones. We suggest an agenda for further research.

The Milbank Quarterly, Vol. 87, No. 4, 2009 (pp. 729–788)
c 2009 Milbank Memorial Fund. Published by Wiley Periodicals Inc.

(Greenhalgh also led a comprehensive study 5 years back reviewing all the major empirical studies springing out of Roger's "diffusion of innovation" theory, involving work from 11 different research domains.)