Dear Thomas and others

As this is my first contribution to the list, let me shortly  
introduce myself. I am the research coordinator of the Faculty of  
Arts and Design in Utrecht, and from this position the editor of the  
book The reflexive zone, research on theory in practice (in arts and  
design education).

I follow the list with great interest, even more as it comes to the  
consequences of a certain perspective on design research for design  
education.

Although it is quite a time ago that Thomas wrote about his  
particular perspective on design research and the consequences for  
design education, I hope I can still make some remarks.

I agree with the fact that design research should be open for  
research outside its own field. Design research as research on design  
and as research in design should use all the knowledge, wherever it  
comes from, as long as it is useful for its own corpus of knowledge.

But if the designer wants to have a voice of its own, a voice from  
within, a voice in the domain of design research, design research  
should be one of the options, one of the activities of the design  
profession itself.  If the designer wants to have influence on the  
dominance of certain theories above other theories, if they want to  
be part on the discourse on design, they have to become practitioner- 
researchers themselves.

This doesn't mean that only designers are allowed to do research on  
design, it just means that also designers should do research on their  
own profession. This also doesn’t mean that all designers should be  
researchers, but it does mean that they all acknowledge that research  
as part of the design process and research as the knowledge creation  
on design is part of the profession. We need researchers who know the  
profession as designers from within, and who are able to reflect on  
it as researchers from the outside, designers who can raise their  
voice if their profession is part of a discourse they don’t like.

This has strong consequences for design education in which (I agree  
with Thomas) theory and practice are separated. Research can be the  
bridge of this cap. By using research in our education as part of the  
design process, we let theory inform practice, and we teach design  
students that research is a part of the design process. This is a way  
of getting over the ‘deeply rooted resistance to theory”. When one  
puts an accent on the intrinsic connection between the activity of  
creating and reflecting, on making and thinking, the resistance  
disappears.

In my experience there are two pedagogical ways of achieving this.



1 The professor in theory and the design professor combine their  
lessons and their assignment, showing the students how closely linked  
theory and practice are, what kinds of research are part of the  
design process (material research, visual research, conceptual  
research) and how they can use knowledge and theory to inform their  
practice.

2 The professor in design is also the professor in theory.


I think 2 is the most preferable option. Therefore we need to educate  
another designer: a practitioner-researcher.  And as I stated in the  
beginning, this should be a design researcher, which is open for all  
kinds of research and theory to ‘inform’ himself and his own  
research. So this doesn’t mean that we don’t need professors in  
theory anymore, but what we mostly need are professors who show their  
students how all kind of theory can inform design practice and design  
research.

  I am very eager to hear your comment on this topic, especially  
since a small European network of design schools is searching for  
ways of working together in the education of the practitioner  
researcher.

best wishes

Drs.Anke Coumans
Research coordinator Utrecht School of Arts and Design