Dear David, Jude, Barbara and all,
In trying to understand and improve design research, it may be worth
remembering that of all the people calling themselves designers and design
researchers, the group in Art and Design' disciplines is a very small part
of the whole.
By mine and others estimates, 'Art and Design' is around 5% of the whole
cluster of fields in which design activity is undertaken or people call
themselves designers. It is unclear whether the proportion is increasing or
reducing, especially with the rapid increase of new fields such in realms
such as social program design, and new technical design fields particularly
in relation to data and information management - algorithm designers anyone?
Second, by observation, the majority of design research happens in
businesses outside academia.
Taken together, it might be reasonably expected that applicants to FDRS
would be very likely to include relevant evidence of design research in
expertise in many areas not addressed by journals and conferences with
'design' in their title. Simialrly, students would likely focus outside Art
and Design journals and conferences.
The above also points to a perhaps more serious concern: 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.
It leads to the question as to whether the Design Research Society, and the
view of design research propagated by it, actually represents the field? At
the moment, I can understand Barbara's and Jude's concerns on this score.
Perhaps it would be helpful if the Design Research Society more clearly
indicated by its actions, its statutes, and the choice of membership of its
governing Council, that it had a wider interest that extended to all design
research?
The DRS Council is elected by its membership, and perhaps the DRS
membership wishes the DRS to focus on Art and Design. If so, perhaps the DRS
should indicate that its interests are more parochial?
Best wishes,
Terry
--
Dr Terence Love
PhD (UWA), B.A. (Hons) Engin, PGCE. FDRS, PMACM, MISI
Love Services Pty Ltd
PO Box 226, Quinns Rocks Western Australia 6030
Tel: +61 (0)4 3497 5848
Fax:+61 (0)8 9305 7629
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-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask]
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of DAVID DURLING
Sent: Tuesday, 1 September 2015 10:50 PM
To: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design
Subject: [SPAM] Re: design research and its closed circle
Dear Jude
Your note about design journals and DRS Fellowship got me out of my slumber
on this list. Without knowing either exactly what question you asked or how
it was interpreted, it's impossible for me to know why you got the answer
that you did, and I cannot deal with that here. It is certainly true that
DRS Fellowship assessors would expect research contributions to made in
design. Applications for FDRS are considered in the round so, in my
estimation, a good track record of publication of original research related
to design should be seen favourably by assessors. An application would have
to demonstrate competence in research in design, but DRS generally
interprets design broadly.
But this raises the question of exactly what are 'design' journals. There
are clearly a few journals that are focused on design matters. Design
Studies is one of them, and it has a focus on design process. Several other
journals are also design focused, including Design Issues, Design Journal,
International Journal of Design, and several others. However, there are many
many other journals that publish design related work across a very wide
range of disciplines.
A quick glance at, for example, the latest outputs from the UK's Research
Excellence Framework shows much design work reported in all manner of
journals, and in other public media including conference proceedings,
reports and exhibitions. Stephen Boyd Davis has explained this fully and
authoritatively. Over the years, following much debate, the panel for
art/design and related subjects has rejected the metrics of citation counts,
journal rankings etc. and I firmly believe this to be the correct judgement.
I know of course that some other panels and national bodies have gone in
other directions.
Much of the best design research is conducted in collaboration with others
often drawn from a number of disciplines. A team dealing with for example
sustainable fashion design might comprise a fashion designer, textile
engineer, programmer, psychologist, materials scientist, and fashion
marketing specialist (I'm making this up...). Let's say that the product is
tested in the marketplace and subsequently becomes a commercial success.
While some aspects of this work MIGHT be reported in a journal often read by
design researchers, it is likely that the researchers would obtain as much
if not more impact in journals related to the fields of textile technology,
advertising/marketing, computing science, behaviour change, or materials
engineering. The work might also be reported in a wide variety of serious or
popular newspapers, or in relevant magazines, and may thereby have greater
impact on the wider public.
In my judgement it is completely misguided to attempt to classify journals
for 'design', as though design were a hermetically sealed environment. Even
worse, attempting to rank those journals in some order of importance
represents the worst kind of academic control-freakery.
Who is to say that research in 'design' must be limited to design journals
(whatever they may be)? And if it is not limited to design journals, then
why should we take account of whether the work is directly reported within
design circles or not? It is the quality of the work that matters, not where
it appears.
Details of FDRS may be found at
http://www.designresearchsociety.org/joomla/become-fellow.html. All are very
welcome to apply!
Kind regards
David
.........................................................................
David Durling FDRS PhD http://durling.tel
.........................................................................
> On 31 Aug 2015, at 6:46 am, CHUA Soo Meng Jude (GPL, PLS)
<[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Well, on a related note, some time ago I wrote to Nigel Cross to ask if my
publications on design would count towards a case for election to the FDRS
and he said unless it was a "design journal", it would not. But of course I
myself think that design is such an important field that it would benefit
from engaging the idea interdisciplinarily, and I've written some works on
design and they've been published in Semiotica, and for special issues
edited by leading semioticians (Susan Petrilli, a Sebeok Fellow) for
instance but that would not "count", nor my piece on design engineering in
educational journals (including one edited by IOE which ranks no.1 on the QS
rankings in education) Whereas if you look at Herbert Simon or James March
for instance, it would be hard to say they don't know anything about design
but these guys published in variety of journals of different fields and
disciplines.
>
> Of course that's not to say that the standard leading Design journals
aren't important - I continue to be stimulated by the very good articles in
Design Studies for instance, but what is design? We ought not presume to
think that if scholars in other fields say something about design, most of
that is hogwash unless a designer puts a stamp of approval on it. The fact
that the very idea of design can be discussed means that it can be contested
and that designers can and do bracket their appreciation of that very
notion, in order attend to musings by scholarship in other disciplines.
>
> Fortunately, quite lately Prof Ken Friedman has started a new journal
called She Ji which welcomes design thinking and management ideas (as I read
its call) and I've found that really liberating, to be honest.
>
> Suppose I came up with a new methodology to "design" - of course it could
be submitted to a design journal - but would it not be better validated if
it were peer reviewed by a methodology journal, not related to design per
se?
>
> Perhaps there is a politics of design research and design thinking that
needs to be contested and challenged? I worry that some of the suppressed
premises of its politics are not very defensible.
>
> Jude
>
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