Dear Terry,
Without wishing to enter the debate in a larger sense, I want to offer a few factual corrections to your recent post. I served for many years as a member of the Design Research Society Council. I did not stand for re-election this year, but I remain an active member of DRS, and a Fellow.
While I do not have full membership statistics, your assertion that "the Council of the Design Research Society has a limiting inbuilt bias by being composed entirely of academics, and predominately of Art and Design fields” doesn’t seem right to me. It is definitely incorrect where it comes to the fellows.
If you look at the Fellows list of the Design Research Society (below), over half come from schools, institutes, and faculties in fields not attached to art. Many of these fellows work in universities that maintain art programs, art schools, and art faculties distinct from design. For them, *design* is *design*. Whatever that may be — and it differs from place it place — it is not what you describe as *art and design*. I am a professor at two design schools. At Tongji University, art is in a totally different college — and so, for that matter, are the separate colleges for engineering, IT, and architecture. At Swinburne University of Technology, design is distinct from any of the art programs at the university. You’ll see that this is case for many fellows. Others work at universities or organisations with no art whatsoever — this was my situation at the Norwegian Business School, and it is the case for JAIST, KAIST, and others.
More than this, many of the fellows who work in a *faculty* of art and design work in design programs exclusively, often collaborating with people from other fields and schools — including engineering, psychology, management, and more.
It is the case that DRS, like most research societies, is more useful to academics than to people in business or industry. First, this is a legacy. People at universities were among the first to building design as a research field. Second, people in business and industry generally don't have time for research outside their specific paid work. Third — and most important — much of what people do in business and industry is proprietary. They are paid to do for-profit research that is owned by the organisations they work for. They can’t publish it. Often, they can’t even talk about it outside their own firm or even their working group within the firm.
It is true that people engaged in “art and design” are a small fraction of the design field. It is not not clear what you mean by “art and design.” A better definition would help. As it is, I’d want to see some figures to support the assertion that most people in DRS or design research are involved in *art*. It is certainly not the case for the Fellows of the Design Research Society.
Yours,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 She Ji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | URL: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/she-ji-the-journal-of-design-economics-and-innovation/
Chair Professor of Design Innovation Studies | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| University Distinguished Professor | Centre for Design Innovation | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia
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List of Fellows
Professor Tracy Bhamra (Loughborough University, UK)
Professor Tom Cassidy (University of Leeds, UK)
Professor Lin-Lin Chen (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan)
Professor Rachel Cooper (University of Lancaster, UK)
Professor Linda Drew (Ravensbourne College, UK)
Professor David Durling (University of Coventry, UK)
Professor Alpay Er (Ozyegin University, Turkey)
Professor Thomas Fischer (Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China)
Professor Ken Friedman (Swinburne University of Technology, Australia)
Dr. Per Galle (Danmarks Designskole, Denmark)
Professor Ann Heylighen (KU Leuven, Belgium)
Professor Jack Ingram (Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, UK)
Professor Robert Jerrard (Birmingham Institute of Art & Design, UK)
Professor Kun-Pyo Lee (Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea)
Dr. Terence Love (Edith Cowan University, Australia)
Professor Victor Margolin (University of Illinois, USA)
Professor Sanjoy Mazumdar (University of California, Irvine, USA)
Professor Judith Mottram (University of Coventry, UK)
Professor Yukari Nagai (Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan)
Dr. Christopher Nemeth (University of Chicago, USA)
Professor Rivka Oxman (Technion, Haifa, Israel)
Professor Tiiu Poldma (Université de Montréal, Canada)
Dr. Lubomir Popov (Bowling Green State University, USA)
Professor Vesna Popovic (Queensland University of Technology, Australia)
Professor Johan Redström (Umeå University, Sweden)
Professor Yoram Reich (Tel Aviv University, Israel)
Professor Robin Roy (The Open University, UK)
Professor Keiichi Sato (Illinois Institute of Technology, USA)
Professor Pamela Schenk (Heriot-Watt University, UK)
Professor Stephen Scrivener (University of the Arts, London, UK)
Professor Kin Wai Michael Siu (Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China)
Professor Erik Stolterman (University of Umeå, Sweden)
Professor Toshiharu Taura (Kobe University, Japan)
Professor Michael Tovey (University of Coventry, UK)
Professor Fred van Houten (Technical University of Twente, The Netherlands)
Professor Sue Walker (University of Reading, UK)
Professor Martin Woolley (University of Coventry, UK)
Professor Pradeep Yammiyavar (Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India)
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