The Routledge Companion to Design Research

Paul A. Rodgers, Joyce Yee, Paul Rodgers, Joyce Yee

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317636243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design General

The Routledge Companion to Design Research offers a comprehensive examination of design research, celebrating the plurality of design research and the wide range of conceptual, methodological, technological and theoretical approaches evident in contemporary design research.

This volume comprises 39 original and high quality design research chapters from contributors around the world, with offerings from the vast array of disciplines in and around modern design praxis, including areas such as industrial and product design, visual communication, interaction design, fashion design, service design, engineering and architecture.

The Companion is divided into five distinct sections with chapters that examine the nature and process of design research, the purpose of design research, and how one might embark on design research. They also explore how leading design researchers conduct their design research through formulating and asking questions in novel ways, and the creative methods and tools they use to collect and analyse data. The Companion also includes a number of case studies that illustrate how one might best communicate and disseminate design research through contributions that offer techniques for writing and publicising research.

The Routledge Companion to Design Research will have wide appeal to researchers and educators in design and design-related disciplines such as engineering, business, marketing, computing, and will make an invaluable contribution to state-of-the-art design research at postgraduate, doctoral, and post-doctoral levels and teaching across a wide range of different disciplines.

Part IWhat is design research?

The chapters in Part I are concerned with defining what design research is in its various contexts and guises. It presents seven chapters that address the broader issue of what design research is in terms of its origin, nature and approaches (Glanville, Jonas, Dong et al., Chua Soo Meng); while also offering some specific examples of how design research is conceived, perceived and applied within disciplinary contexts (Chon and Harland) and interdisciplinary contexts (Pullin). Writing styles differ, again illustrating the variety of approaches and aims of the different pieces; some like Jonas, Dong et al., Chua Soo Meng and Chon adopt a more philosophical and theoretical stance to present their arguments, while others prefer to use a more personal voice, as seen in the work of Glanville, Pullin and Harland.

Glanville provides an appropriate starting point for the reader as he offers a personal viewpoint of what design research is. He has done so in the hope that it will help the reader form their own understanding of what design research is. He starts by defining what ‘design’ and ‘research’ mean before tackling the issue of what ‘design research’ is, charting what he terms as the sometimes ‘uncomfortable marriage’ between the two. He draws attention to a growing division in design research, between the more established model of design research based on a scientific paradigm in comparison to a model where a more ‘designerly’ way of conducting research through design is emerging. This thread is continued throughout Part I with Jonas. Jonas presents a detailed articulation of what this alternate model might be; arguing that design research is neither science nor art. He presents this alternative as a new trans-disciplinary model focusing on real-world problems. Jonas introduces the idea that ‘research-through-design’ is the wormhole in which we can escape the dead end of current design research. Addressing further questions of the nature of design research is the chapter by Dong and his colleagues, which helps unpick and analyse the different types of design knowledge in order to understand how design research is performed and the form that design knowledge takes.

It is important to note that while contemporary attitudes towards design are increasingly viewing design as its own disciplinary subject, Chua Soo Meng, in his chapter, warns against methodological ‘exclusivism’ that this approach entails. He refers to Herbert Simon's and Nigel Cross's use of a central case research approach where ‘good’ designs and ‘good’ designers should be studied. If applying this approach to the selection of what is important to study, then this makes the exclusivity stance problematic since this moral standpoint (to decide what is good or not) is not only exclusive to designers but also to other scholars in other disciplines. In support of a more inclusive approach to design research, Pullin not only offers an illustration of how design knowledge and ideas can be mapped against the different disciplinary knowledge but also presents a case study to illustrate how positioning design in the middle of other disciplines may embody a unique role for future design research.

The chapters by Pullin, Chon and Harland offer examples of how broad design research is, especially when viewed through disciplinary lenses. Both Chon's and Harland's pieces feature design research in subject areas often devoid of critical research: fashion design and graphic design respectively. As such, both are seeking to establish a foundational base for the subject. Chon presents a framework for fashion research that is sociological and humanistic in its approach and presents design knowledge in fashion as being constantly involved in a fluid meaning-making process involving designers, individuals and society. Chon's framework also offers a broader understanding of design knowledge as being socially constructed and communicated in the relationships between designers and objects, individuals and society, and designers and individuals. Part I ends with Harland's chapter, which documents his attempts to build graphic theory from graphic design research by going back to the fundamental question of what is the core of graphic design. Harland's chapter is a fitting end to a part attempting to answer ‘What is design research?’ in that it illustrates the importance of distinguishing theory for design and theory from design.

1 The Sometimes Uncomfortable Marriages of Design and Research

DOI: 10.4324/9781315758466-2

Ranulph Glanville

Personal introduction

There are many possible arguments the author of a chapter on design research might make, other than the one I chose to make here. And I have no doubt that what I have written will not sit comfortably or properly, in the minds of some readers. I can imagine the instantly dismissive tone of a certain type of response, precisely the sort of response I am trying to argue against. None of this makes my account wrong: it merely makes it contentious. It may be seen as contentious in what it includes, but also, and perhaps more so, in what and who it does not mention. The difficulty in any attempt to provide a position – or a review – is to find a line and then to hang a convincing and interesting story on it. In finding that line, any author will accommodate many views, but inevitably not all, and will feature the work of some, but not most, authorities. A further difficulty is not to drown the narrative of the story in reference, while yet showing the story is justifiable. And it is also to make space to include your own view, as author, without overplaying it. The real test of a text like this is, I believe, whether the argument helps you (the reader, but the author also) better to understand, and to act better. This is a reader's judgement: like a placebo, the question is not what design research ‘really’ is, but how this account helps readers themselves understand and go forward.

Design

Generally, we do not learn all that much about the current use of words from their etymology, yet it is sometimes helpful and revealing to acknowledge origins.

The word design is full of ambiguity. It first came into English from the Italian (via French) around 1500, according to Côrte-Real (2010), although the etymology goes back to Latin. Côrte-Real gives two sources:

• disignare, meaning to draw (hence the identification of designing with drawing)
• designare, meaning to designate

We should notice that both sources are verbs: that is, they are concerned with acting rather than the outcome of acting. As we will discover later, the slippage of the word design to be treated as a noun as well as, and often in preference to, a verb has a considerable influence on the shape of design research.

It is not as though the English speaking world did not have design and designers before these modified Latin words were imported and compounded. Nor are words used in other Germanic European languages for a cognate activity consistent with English: the Dutch ‘vormgeving’ is literally ‘form giving’ while the German ‘Gestaltung’ also refers to ‘forming’, the making of a pattern or a whole. But it seems we did not use a special term to distinguish the activity we now call designing before 1500, except for musical designing (composing – which, to my mind, suggests the use of pre-defined units) and words relating to architecture. As for the word architect, its Ancient Greek origin is made up of two parts:

• arkhi-, meaning chief
• tekto¯n, meaning builder

Although architect refers to building (i.e. constructing), it does not necessarily refer to what we now call buildings. What is considered the first (western) book on design is by Marcus Vitruvius Pollio (born c. 80–70 bce, died after c. 15 bce, generally referred to as Vitruvius). He was the creator of the idealised Vitruvian man, famously drawn by Leonardo, and the author of what is still the best definition of architecture – as constituted of three equal parts: well-made, functional and delightful. His book was published around 15 bce as “De Architectura libri decem” (Ten Books on Architecture), containing instructions on making Water Mills, Clocks, Town Planning, Temples, Civic Buildings and Aquaducts (amongst others). It was not limited to what we would nowadays think of as architecture or even building(s): and tekto¯n itself comes from the Greek word techné, meaning doing/making – from which we get our word and concept technology. Vitruvius's book was, in effect, what we might think of as a design manual. I use the verb, design, to indicate what I hold is the activity central to all designers, including architects.

Design, as a subject in its own right, appears during the Industrial Revolution, usually dated in the UK (where it originated) between roughly 1760 and 1840. (Pye (1999) gives a good account, and the British Broadcasting Corporation's 2009 TV series “The Genius of Design” is convincing.) The ability to produce, by machine, multiples of large and expensive objects greatly outside human skill and scale meant there was a need to be able to construct these objects in the mind, before committing machines (and their operators) to production. Early machines were already programmable: the Jacquard loom was programmed by punch cards later used in the early days of computer programming (when they were called Hollerith cards) and still used to control silk spinning and weaving machines in China. From this moment, we can distinguish industrial design from architecture – yet the centre of each discipline is, I would argue (in the absence of the verb to architect), the same; and the verb to design, describing this shared central act, is relevant to both fields and, I believe, to all designing.

Machines are tended by mechanics and engineers. Indeed, much of what Vitruvius described as architecture would now be thought of as (civil) engineering. In some schools, architects are trained as civil engineers, later adding design as a sort of top-up. This engineering approach is rather different to the approach of those who come from what in the UK we traditionally think of as a design education (see Archer, 2005) as I sketch in the next paragraph; an important difference when it comes to research that reflects back to early days of formal design education.

In the UK, until recently, art and design¹ education – as opposed to apprenticeship – was taught in vocational colleges such as those set up by William Morris and others. These colleges, often called Working Men's Institutes, eventually became technical and art colleges and polytechnics which, in the UK version, were to be colleges of further education based in the local community and concerned with vocational training. In contrast, universities were based in academic research. Engineers were generally taught at universities (though mechanics were taught at vocational schools). Architects were taught at either: though the University of Oxford still rejects architecture as a vocational, non-academic subject. Design was taught at vocational colleges and is still only slowly making inroads in many older universities. Thus, while design (except where married to engineering) and architecture are rejected as academic studies by the University of Oxfo...