Dear Chuck,
Thanks for this suggestion, and thanks for your kind words. I agree with you entirely, and my return to full-time research makes it possible to work on such projects.
We will make the findings of the capacity-mapping project widely available to the public as well as to the practitioner community and the research community.
Our reports will include “the purpose, information base, approach, research plan, methodology, assessment criteria, and presumed significance.” We won’t publish this information before we undertake the work, though. That’s premature. Projects such as this have an emergent quality with advice and feedback from experts and from the field. We’re at the starting phase of a project that will take two years.
The entire field would benefit from a broader selection of exemplary research findings. This is why I hope more people will research and write literature review articles for our journals. Literature review articles summarize work to date in a field. In design research with its many disciplines and sub-disciplines, this means examining publications in specific areas. Journals in many fields publish literature review articles that analyze research projects and findings. These articles categorize main conceptual and theoretical trends, they identify exemplary work, they identify gaps in the knowledge of the field, and they suggest promising new directions. I am certain that Design Studies, Design Issues, the International Journal of Design, Design and Culture, The Design Journal, The Journal of Engineering Design Research, and other top journals would welcome solid literature review articles.
Together with colleagues, I have two literature review projects under way for specific niches in our field. For one specific niche, we have gathered a collection of over 500 articles and books. To do a serious review for the entire field of design research over the past two decades would itself require a book, and I’m not quite ready to undertake that kind of project.
Several projects are indeed under way that will identify excellent examples of design research in much the way you suggest. I am involved with one of these. To be useful, this kind of work requires a well-structured framework. We have the framework now, and we are starting the work to identify specific examples. We expect to publish our findings in 2014.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
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Chuck Burnette wrote:
—snip—
Ken, Your focus on research universities and their role, carries with it an obligation to communicate to potential end users (practitioners, their clients, and those affected) what university research has accomplished, or might accomplish with respect to the future of designing.
You could do a world of good if you compiled a list, as only you can do, of research findings you deem most informative, and exemplary research projects focused on design issues that you deem to be exemplary. It would also be good practice to communicate the purpose, information base, approach, research plan, methodology, assessment criteria, and presumed significance of the work you are about to undertake. Research isn't evidential until it can be considered from a purposeful / contextualized perspective.
—snip—
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