Dear Francois, Ken and all,

Thanks to Ken for pointing out that we sometimes go over the same ground.

Like Ken, I was also interested in the domains of design from the early 90s. We worked together with others on mapping design fields for a while.

I suggest among other things that identifying the domains of design research is better if we avoid using the idea of 'design knowledge'

Here is a  trilogy of four issues that spring to mind in exploring the meaning of 'design research':

*   The added value to others gained from design research
*   The distraction of the idea  'knowledge' in design research
*   The relationship between design research and future studies
*   Boundaries of design research

Issue 1: Added value to others and design research

Looking back, it is clear that design research has resulted in major improvements to the ways that products, systems, services and programs have come into being. Examples include: a halving of the development time for motor vehicles, significant reductions in design-related costs of large construction projects (e.g. Singapore airport costs reduced by 8% due to improved web-based design and construction process), reductions in the serious failure rate of large information systems design projects due to improved design processes, improved quality and reliability of designed products due to standardised design systems such as VDI 2221. The reason it is an important focus of design research to investigate how people design is that improvements to the ways that people design produce real and significant economic and social gains. 

This is not to deny other significant contributions developed as a result of work in other fields such as ergonomics, engineering, the natural and social sciences, and  the Arts and Humanities. These have contributed to the information resources designers have used in developing new designs. The key point is that it is research aimed at improving the ways that designers design that provide the main value to others.  Mostly, however, this has not resulted from methods for individual designers' and design teams' activities.  Instead, the fruits of design research are primarily gained by becoming embedded in computerised systems that designers use whose primary purpose is to automate as much as possible of design activity. 

Until recently, there have been large strides made by drawing directly on research approaches of other disciplines. Much of the improvements in design processes has resulted from research based on approaches from management, project management, in service training, information management and information and communication technologies. The application of these approaches over the last thirty years has shown up weaknesses in core conceptualisation. 

Until recently, it has been sufficient to use terms like design, creative, system, image, vision and user loosely provided they were accompanied by sufficient arm waving. Contemporary design projects are typically complex and multidisciplinary with requirements of high standards for reliability, manufacturability, functionality and user friendliness, whilst at the same time being economical to produce and satisfying increasing restrictive legislative criteria in relation to safety, intellectual property, environmental and social impacts etc.   

Research aimed at solid improvements in effectiveness and efficiency of design teams and design processes in this context requires better conceptual foundations than has been the case over the last thirty years. This is where Philosophy of Design is important to the future of design research (and designing). Design philosophers are working on identifying   how key concepts are best defined, so that design theories can be built to facilitate the building of improved models of how people design, so that improvements to the ways that people design can be hypothesised, so that these hypotheses can be tested and validated by research - so that designers can design more effectively and efficiently.  

Issue 2:  The Distraction of 'Knowledge' in Design Research 

Design research involves research. In defining design research, the idea of 'design knowledge' is a distraction. The appropriate focus of design research is on providing added value to stakeholders in design processes. This parallels the ways that other disciplines provide added value to designers. For example, research in Engineering provides technical information that designers can use. Research in Art provides better understanding of aesthetics that visual designers can use. Research in Psychology provides increased understanding of the emotional responses people have towards particular forms and services. 

Design research that adds value for stakeholders is that research that informs how designing can be undertaken more effectively and efficiently. 

For PhD programs, the focus is in research training. Educationally, the main issue is to provide an educational and assessment context in which the PhD student can learn, and demonstrate that they have learned, the ability to independently undertake dependable justifiable and valuable research, develop well justified useful theory, and describe their findings and research process in a complete and unambiguous manner. Having the PhD student undertake a research project fulfils most of these requirements. Requiring them to develop an individual contribution to knowledge in their research makes the learning authentic, reduces the possibility of cheating, and provides motivational support via the candidate's ego. It is only in this secondary role that is found the sense in most PhD contributions to 'knowledge'. Some might ask whether the focus on ‘design knowledge’ is a problem. I agree. It is a problem in particular, because of confusion about meanings of both 'design' and 'knowledge' in this context. Conceptual clarity is considerably improved if discussion about designing, design research and philosophy of design drop the concept of 'design knowledge'.  

Issue 3: Relationship between Design Research and Futures Studies 

The outcomes of designing and design processes change the future, and it is a necessary aspect of undertaking designing to understand these changes and use this information as an important part of the background context. The purpose of research that is part and parcel of Futures Studies is to make reliable theory models of future situations. These theory models, and perhaps the primary research data unearthed by Futures Studies researchers, are information that designers use in creating designs. 

This points to key differences between Design Research and Futures Studies. Futures Studies provides information about future scenarios that is of use by designers. 

Futures Studies does not focus on understanding designing or improving the efficiency and effectiveness of design activities. The study of the impact of particular sorts of design activities on future scenarios is a secondary issue.  Design research, in contrast, has a core focus on improving the efficiency and effectiveness of design activities. Research into future scenarios in general is an entirely secondary issue in design research.

Issue 4 in the trilogy: Boundaries of Design Research 

Much of the confusion that marks design theory making is a consequence of unclear boundaries of design research in relation to other disciplines. One explanation for this is that designing is undertaken in many disciplines, and a general lack of conceptual clarity about the differences in purpose and process of designers and design researchers has resulted in a tendency to assume that 'all is design research' (including designing). I suggest that this is unhelpful for the formation of a coherent body of theory. 

A first step in developing a coherent body of theory is to identify which core areas are addressed by design research that are not core areas of other disciplines. If there are none, the implication is that design research is a subset, or duplication of, one or more other disciplines. 

Assuming this is not so, then the identified core areas of design research immediately suggest the disciplinary boundaries of design research. This clarifies things conceptually because it identifies theory 'edges' at which design theories must align with theories of other disciplines. 

I suggest that there are only two core foci of design research that satisfy the above.

	A) The study of designing as it happens inside individuals and among individuals. 

	B) The study of how individuals interact with designed objects. In short, how the artificial is devised and used. 

The study of any special ways that designers internally view design contexts, partially completed designs and designed artefacts, systems and services would fall naturally into these core areas - and without needing to invoke the idea of 'design knowledge'.

Best wishes,
Terry

==
Dr Terence Love 
MICA, PMACM, MAISA, FDRS, AMIMechE
Director
Design Out Crime & CPTED Centre
Perth, Western Australia
[log in to unmask] 
www.designoutcrime.org 
+61 (0)4 3497 5848
==
ORCID 0000-0002-2436-7566


-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> On Behalf Of Ken Friedman
Sent: Thursday, 21 June 2018 3:54 PM

<snip>
"Dear Colleagues,
Every now and then, we seem to enter a time warp, repeating old conversations "


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