Design Research Now: Essays and Selected Projects 9783764384722, 9783764384715
The latest trends in design research Design is becoming a recognised academic discipline, and design research is the d
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English Pages 254 [213] Year 2007
Preface BIRD
Introduction RalfMichel
Essays I The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research
From a Design Science to a Design Discipline: Understanding Designerly
Ways of Knowing and Thinking
Strategies of Design Research: Productive Science and Rhetorical Inquiry
Design Research, an Oxymoron?
Doing Design as a Part of Doing Research
Pieter Jan Stappers
Research Shape of Things to Come
For Inspiration Only
Research through Design: a Camera Case Study
Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions, EMUDE
Essays II Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline
Design as Practice, Science and Research
Design Semiotics – Institutional Experiences and an Initiative for a Semiotic Theory of Form
Design Research for Sustainable Social Innovation
Biographies Authors
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Design Research Now Essays and Selected Projects
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Board of International Research in Design, BIRD
Klaus Thomas Edelmann Michael Erlhoff Simon Grand Wolfgang Jonas Ralf Michel Beat Schneider
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Ralf Michel (ed.)
Design Research Now Essays and Selected Projects
Birkhäuser Basel · Boston · Berlin
Colophon
Editor, concept and editorial: Ralf Michel, Zurich Concept and editorial: Janine Schiller, Zurich Graphic Design: Formal, Christian Riis Ruggaber & Dorian Minnig, Zurich Translation from German into English (“Design as Practice, Science and Research”, “The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research”, “Introduction” and “Foreword”, and the biographies of R. Michel and B. Schneider): Robin Benson, Berlin Printer: Kösel GmbH & Co. KG, Altusried-Krugzell Paper: MunkenPrint white, paper volume 1.5, 100g/m2; LuxoArt silk, 115g/m2 Typeface: Akkurat Light, Arnhem Blond
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007931249 Bibliographic information published by the German National Library The German National Library lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in other ways, and storage in data bases. For any kind of use, permission of the copyright owner must be obtained. © 2007 Birkhäuser Verlag AG Basel · Boston · Berlin P.O. Box 133, CH-4010 Basel, Switzerland Part of Springer Science+Business Media Printed on acid-free paper produced from chlorine-free pulp. TCF ∞ Printed in Germany ISBN: 978-3-7643-8471-5 987654321 www.birkhauser.ch
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Preface Introduction
BIRD Ralf Michel
p. 13 p. 15
Essays I
The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research Gui Bonsiepe
p. 25
From a Design Science to a Design Discipline: Understanding Designerly Ways of Knowing and Thinking Nigel Cross
p. 41
Strategies of Design Research: Productive Science and Rhetorical Inquiry Richard Buchanan
p. 55
Design Research, an Oxymoron? Klaus Krippendorff
p. 67
Doing Design as a Part of Doing Research Pieter Jan Stappers
p. 81
Shape of Things to Come Paul Chamberlain, Peter Gardner, Rebecca Lawton
p. 99
For Inspiration Only Ianus Keller
p. 119
Research through Design: a Camera Case Study Joep Frens
p. 135
Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions, EMUDE Ezio Manzini, Anna Meroni
p. 157
Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline Wolfgang Jonas
p. 187
Design as Practice, Science and Research Beat Schneider
p. 207
Design Semiotics – Institutional Experiences and an Initiative for a Semiotic Theory of Form Susann Vihma
p. 219
Design Research for Sustainable Social Innovation Ezio Manzini
p. 233
Authors
p. 251
Research
Essays II
Biographies
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BIRD
Preface
Board of International Research in Design
If international design research is to continue to develop, we need to have fundamental discussions, not only on what we understand design research to be, but also on the most important questions and issues, on exemplary design projects, and on the most promising subject areas now and in the future. Rather than asserting unilaterally that a particular conception of research is the only valid one, or that a single type of approach is exemplary, however, our aim should be to present a diversity of viewpoints and research projects to a wider audience of design researchers, introducing specific research areas and giving reference points for more extensive debate on the focus, issues, objectives, approaches and methods of design research. The significance of Design Research Now by Ralf Michel in this context it is that it collects together a number of positions that have come to prominence over the past few years and are now repeatedly cited in discussions of design research. At the same time, it has the courage to present exemplary projects that are particularly exciting for contemporary discussion of design research. The selection here resulted from an evaluation procedure in which Ralf Michel compiled key positions on design research according to his own assessment of the research community. This compilation, then, is definitely not representative of BIRD’s individual preferences but rather an attempt to show the state of design research today. BIRD’s various publication projects help to make the central positions in design research available to others by presenting interesting projects appropriately, publishing key reference books and anthologies in the original language and/or in translation, and compiling a set of reference points and materials that are vital for international design research. The aim is to illustrate the enormous heterogeneity of these key positions, to convey en idea of the vigorous and controversial research debate, and to encourage and stimulate further discussion.
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Ralf Michel
Introduction
For over forty years, design research has been considered an essential element in the emerging academic discipline of design. In the last decade in particular, it has been conducted more broadly than ever before. At the core of most, if not all, concepts of design research is the realisation that, in an age of increasingly complex conditions for practising and studying design, there are almost no systematic bases for the continued development of design as an academic discipline; systematic in the sense of scientific and thus independently arguable. Many people have come to realise that if design is to have a future as a socially, culturally or economically relevant discipline, it cannot dispense with the academic tools of the discipline’s cognitive force and agency. The teaching and research activities at the Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm (hfg ulm) are an important point of departure in the evolution of design into an academically grounded discipline supported by theoreticians, teachers and former students. Their number includes Tomás Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe and Klaus Krippendorff, whose concepts and theories influence design discourse to this day. In his essay, ‘The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research’, Gui Bonsiepe explicitly introduces the German term Entwurf as an alternative to Design (the current popularity of which has, in his opinion, rendered it misleading). This makes translation problematic because English, unlike the Romance languages, has no exact equivalent to Entwurf. In his essay, Bonsiepe notes that it is no longer possible to design in the same way as people did one or two generations ago. He therefore concludes that it is equally impossible to do research as people did one or two generations ago, ‘i.e. orienting themselves primarily or exclusively on texts.’ Bonsiepe summarises this approach in the phrase ‘from discourses to viscourses.’ In his postscript, he expresses the need for a debate between design and design research on the one hand, and the very real exclusive processes of a globalised economy on the other. At the end of the present publication, Ezio Manzini returns to this theme and broadens the concept to include ‘Design Research for Sustainable Social Innovation.’ Manzini observes that in sustainable development, the role of the user changes, and that of the designer changes decisively. This process, he argues, must logically result in new design processes and have far-reaching consequences both for how design defines itself as a discipline and for design research too. From the late 1960s to the present, the driving forces of design research have come from the English-speaking countries, especially the UK, and from colleges that encouraged and offered doctorates in design research, and whose exponents still engage in the debate on the development of independent positions within design science. In 2006, Nigel Cross’s
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‘Designerly Ways of Knowing’ 01
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republished in extended form as a book, which will be
published jointly by BIRD and Birkhäuser this year as a reprint. In the essay included here,
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See de Vries, Cross and Grant [18]
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he describes ‘Understanding Designerly Ways of Knowing and Thinking’ in the context of a shift from a design science to a design discipline. 02
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More recently, the ‘Research through Design’
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approach has gained special
epistemological significance. In 1993 Christopher Frayling proposed the integration of subjective experience-, activity- and image-based designer-artistic knowledge into the process of intersubjectively verifiable knowledge production. His position has far-reaching consequences: on the one hand, it opens up perspectives for independent design research, thus simultaneously provoking rigorous debates on the ‘academic’ significance of that approach. On the other hand, ‘research through design’ is usually pursued in the form of applicationoriented research. As such, it is expected to produce useful – i.e. applicable – knowledge, in line with the growing significance of practice-oriented and application-related knowledge for 03
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science and society.03
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In his essay, ‘Design and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline,’ Wolfgang Jonas illustrates how research through design provides the epistemological concepts for the development of a genuine design research paradigm, which he considers a prerequisite for methodological development. His text compares inter alia the positions of Christopher Frayling and Alain Findeli
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on the significance of ‘research through de-
sign;’ his own definition sides with Findeli, before concluding that: ‘The Scientific Paradigm has to be embedded into the Design Paradigm…’ Richard Buchanan focuses in his essay on the strategy of design inquiry and its closely related branches of productive science and rhetorical inquiry, in order to demonstrate viable alternatives to the strategies of design science and dialectics. Klaus Krippendorff asks whether the expression ‘design research’ is not, in fact, an oxymoron. He concludes more constructively that at any moment, the viability of a design depends on its stakeholders’ conceptions, commitments and resources, which can be studied in order to inform design decisions. In his opinion, this is what the investigation of design needs to do. Finally, Pieter Jan Stappers reports extensively on his experience with the theory and research of design engineering. He believes that it is possible for design research to make optimal use of designers’ skills rather than forcing them into existing modes of disciplinary research. This approach lays greater emphasis on the appreciation of generative types of research. His essay is therefore entitled ‘Doing Design as a Part of Doing Research.’ Susann Vihma advocates a ‘semiotic Theory of Form’ and examines current positions (such as Klaus Krippendorff’s ‘Semantic turn’, 2006). She presents her thoughts in the institutional context of the School of Visual Culture, University of Art and Design Helsinki, which draws on a wealth of experience in research-oriented doctoral theses on design.
Introduction
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Frayling C (1993) Research in Art and Design. Royal College of Art Research Papers 1(1): 1–5
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Gibbons M, Limoges C, Nowotny H, Schwartzman S, Scott P, Trow M (1994) The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Sage, London
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Findeli A (1998) A Quest for Credibility: Doctoral Education and Research in Design at the University of Montreal. Doctoral Education in Design, Ohio, 8–11 October 1998
Ralf Michel
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From his experience in setting up the Scientific Community of Design Research in Switzerland, Beat Schneider presents his views on design research in the context of an emerging academic discipline, and reveals design as differentiated practice, science and research. This first volume on design research attempts to display the significant positions within design research, placing selected research projects slightly to one side; they stand alone and are not included as illustrations of the essays. A glance at the table of contents alone shows that the book contains far more (nine) essays on design research than reports on finished research projects (four). There are several reasons for this. The two most important are: —
Current research projects often (still) do not satisfy the quality standards proposed by the pioneers of design research.
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BIRD – the Birkhäuser Board of International Research in Design – is still in an early stage of development. It is therefore possible that not enough relevant research projects were submitted (more than 80 proposals have arrived from Europe, North America, Asia,New Zealand and Australia). The proposals received were first examined by experts. We then invited the best candi-
dates to submit an article; this underwent double-blind peer review by international experts who then prepared a written report on it. We had decided in advance to publish only those articles that were accepted by the experts with no or only minor revision. The criteria for examining and reporting on the articles were the research topic’s design autonomy, the quality and originality of the reported research project, the significance of the topic and the visual presentation of the results. Articles by Anna Meroni on design and sustainability, Joep Frens on a researchthrough-design project, Paul Chamberlain’s ‘Shape of Things to Come,’ and Ianus Keller’s research on designer interaction with informal collections of visual material, made the grade and are published in this book. The book does not contain any research projects or contributions from Asia and Scandinavia. However, in places where design research is a normal part of the development of design educational courses and the design discipline, hundreds of people are now doing research on topical questions. I hope that the next volume of Design Research Now will fill this gap.
Introduction
Ralf Michel
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