Hej Nicolai,
You've probably seen Koskinen, Binder & Redström's paper in Artefact a couple years back (Lab, Field, Gallery). There's a Morgan Kaufmann book coming out elaborating that framing later in the year. Tuuli Mattelmäki and I had an education-oriented discussion where we tried to get away from the programmatic/polemic distinctions that seem to be popular. Birger cites us in the paper you review below, but he seems to be on a different project. Jared Donovan has a chapter on design/research intersections in his thesis that I recall being very good and quite critical, certainly of Archer and Frayling. You might ask him for a copy ([log in to unmask]). Steve Scrivener has a few papers on these topics as well that I recall being quite sharp, i think published in Working Papers in Art & Design.
Good luck with the project. Looks interesting.
Cheers
Ben
--
Ben Matthews
Associate Professor
Mads Clausen Institute
University of Southern Denmark
+45 6550 1675
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On 8/23/11 1:36 PM, "Nicolai Steinø" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hello list,

In a paper on design research ("Design Research between Design and Research") for a forthcoming anthology published by the Aarhus School of Architecture Press, a colleague and I have dug into the various ways in which design research is currently being framed and propose - we believe - a more meaningful distinction than the prevailing ones. As can be seen in the excerpt below, we discuss distinctions made by Frayling, Dickson and Sevaldson, who all make use of prepositions - in, for, through, etc. - for their categorisations. I would be thankful for any hints to other authors who have discussed the topic, and use different framings.

Excerpt from our draft:

As in other fields of research, different attempts have been made to define and categorise design research and its possible subcategories. Frayling (1993) makes a distinction between research into, through, and for design (and art). While research into design, to Frayling, can be historical research, aesthetic or perceptual research, or research into theoretical perspectives on design (and art), research through design can be either material design, develoment work or action research. Research for design, in Fraylings definition, is not research in the academic sense, but rather the kind of analyses, studies and investigations which artists and designers may perform in order to inform their creative work process.

Dickson (2002), like Frayling, lists three categories of design research, research into, in and through design. While the former denotes inquiries into design by researchers from disciplines other than design (i.e. art historians or sociologists), the next denotes research about design methodology, processes and communication made by researchers with a background in design, and the latter denotes the use of design methods to enquire into fields other than design. Although Frayling is not occupied with the professional background of the researcher, Dickson's definition of research into and through design seems akin to Frayling's.

Sevaldson (2010) uses some of the same prepositions, but add some categories. While he agrees with Dickson on the definition of research into design, research through design is not limited to fields other than design but can be applied to the design field itself. Dickson's research in design, it seems, to Sevaldson is research by design. In addition, he defines research for design as "research that serves design and is subservient to design" (ibid.), as well as the dual pair of design-oriented research, which is the application of design behaviour in research, and research-oriented design, by which research is a potential spin-off by the creation of new products.

Rather than engaging in a battle over prepositions, we argue that all of these sets of definitions are poor instruments to define the field of design research. Dickson's definition of research into design anticipates that the researcher's professional background is defining the outcome of the research. While this is meaningful in the sense that different professions have different dominant interests and methods, it doesn't mean that these interests and methods cannot be overlapping or shared among other professions. As such it is an imprecise delimitation which might add more to the mutual preconceptions about different disciplines than to the clarification of the nature of the particular form of research. As an example, there are plenty of architects doing research in architectural history or style which, by this definition would be the domains of historians and art historians and hence qualify as research into design.

Similarly, research through design does not indicate anything about the object of study as - by definition - it can be applied to different fields of study. As such, research through design is a research method - just like case studies, laboratory testing, or action research - rather than a subfield denoting a particular interest for design research. The same can be said for research in/by design, which for both Dickson and Sevaldson implies that the researcher has a background in design. Again, this ad honem approach to defining design research takes more interest in the researcher than in the research.

As an essentially interdisciplinary field encompassing technical, aesthetic as well as social components, all the research paradigms of the arts and sciences and any combination thereof are potentially relevant and valid in design research. To claim a universal architecture and design research paradigm, always and only applicable to architecture and design research does therefore not seem very meaningful. This does not exclude however, that there might be - or evolve over time - a dominant paradigm for architecture and design research. To claim exclusiveness for such an imagined paradigm as reserved only for architecture and design research, however, seems as little meaningful.

Nonetheless, a distinction between different types of design research is still relevant. We would like to suggest a distinction defined by the different objects of study, which may be taken up in design research:
* There is design research which deals with ontological questions of what design is and what is it good for.
* There is design research which deals with epistemological questions of how we can know about design and how we perform design.
* There is design research which deals with contextual questions of how design interacts with the world when it meets people, cultures, social systems, the environment, etc.
* Finally, there is design research which deals with procedural questions of which tools, techniques and procedures that are relevant to the execution of design.

To the extent that design methods are used to investigate into fields other than design - such as research through design - they should be considered shared methods and thus not be included into the definition of design research.

While some research methodologies may be more appropriate or dominant for some research questions than other, there is no reason to believe that a particular type of research questions can be investigated only by the use of one particular research methodology, nor that one particular research methodology is useful only to investigate one a particular type of research questions. On the contrary, different research methodologies - as well as different professional backgrounds of researchers - are likely to lead to different ways of knowing about the object of study, none of which are a priori dismissible as irrelevant to design.

References:

Dickson, Thomas (2002) Designforskning: en international oversigt. Copenhagen: Dansk Center for Integreret Design
Frayling, Christopher (1993) "Research in Art and Design". Royal College of Art Research Papers, Vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-5
Sevaldson, Birger (2010) "Discussions and Movements in Design Research: A systems approach to practice research in design". FORMakademisk, Vol. 3, no. 1, 2010, pp. 8-35. Downloaded from http://www.formakademisk.org/index.php/formakademisk/article/view/62/85 on 06/04/2011

Kind regards,

Nic


NICOLAI STEINØ
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