Dr. Naomi Bueno de Mesquita

Designers may assert that they are “just” designers, but in reality, they possess a wealth of academic knowledge and conceptual understanding that is extremely beneficial to the industry and to other disciplines, but is currently being lost. With this manifesto, I don’t want to suggest that designers should change their practices; instead, my aim is to draw attention to an opportunity that arises with each designer’s intuitive or unique process to add to a body of knowledge by incorporating it into a framework.

Knowledge is integral to design, even though there are significant differences between how knowledge is constructed and applied in the field. In industrial design or engineering, for example, research is often done to gather knowledge about materials, processes, people, histories, etc. to improve a design. This is what we call research for design. At Design Academy Eindhoven, there is a greater propensity to conduct research through design, using design as a vehicle to understand phenomena.

A significant amount of fascinating research is performed at DAE. However, often what is shared with the world is the outcome, whereas the majority of the conducted research underpinning the design remains hidden. The benefit of universal ideas arising from a specific design process is often lost. Within a framework of design research, such findings would no longer be inward- looking, “private” parts of the research process, but rather public, valuable insights which could also be disseminated and built upon.

The research and its positioning ask for a shared denominator for such a framework. This could be positive in promoting experimentation and the inclusion of very diverse and original perspectives. If there is a framework to go with it, both the designs and the more universal reflections on design come to fruition. An analogy could be made in the distinction between cartography and critical cartography, with the latter reflecting on the discipline and methods of mapping. The value lies in “capturing” that second, reflective layer of the design process. Therefore, such research includes the historical research, fieldwork, or prototypes inherent to the design process, and furthermore includes an essential yet particular ephemeral aspect namely: a critical reflection upon the role of design in an overarching sense.

What could such a framework look like?
We could think of how tools, methods, and approaches are linked to specific concepts and theories and aid in advancing those concepts or theories but also innovate on the methodologies with which to investigate them. For instance, a designer might create a tool to perform research within a community. In the process, they might generate insights into the lived experiences of the community. In this framework for design research, the tool itself becomes transferable, so that other designers and researchers can use it. Yet, there is an additional layer to this framework: the designer could share their analysis of how the designed tool improves upon existing approaches and its implications regarding established design methods. In my view, design research does not only share these previously hidden research methods, tools, and approaches, it also generates reflection on the methods of design research in general, helping us to constantly improve our field through critical reflection.

By using a design research framework to categorize past and present projects, it may be possible to gain insight into the research components used while also identifying the strengths and blind spots of research at DAE. Working with a framework could promote long-term engagement with concepts, tools, practices, and methodologies and turn projects into building blocks for future research. Although such a framework is not all-encompassing and will require ongoing revision, it is a start for constructive debate.

To kick off this debate, to explore building a framework together, collectively formulating criteria could be a fitting start. In this manifesto, I outline criteria that could characterise design research at DAE.

1. Design research reframes
   Design research is a field that often addresses wicked problems1 for which not one solution exists, and for which reformulating the situation is integral to addressing it (Gaver, 2012). Where a scientific approach is concerned with defining ‘what is?’, design research is concerned with problematising the ‘is’, either through surfacing (unseen, ignored, surprising) aspects of it, or by creating ‘what might be’ —aided by its tools and methods— that other fields can’t, or are less capable of (Bueno de Mesquita, 2022). I would even go so far as to suggest that the distinctiveness of design research at DAE might be found in the reformulation and manifestation of the problem.

2. Design research is constructivist
   When contrasting design research with research conducted in other fields, such as the natural or social sciences, we can state that design research at DAE is more interventionist. It is less interested in describing the past or the status quo but takes a rather radical constructivist approach. Design is used as a tool to understand phenomena, and while doing so, the designed object, artifact, or experience,…purposefully intervenes in the subject of study and contributes to shaping futures. Design research is, therefore, especially interesting when used in participatory action or futures research. The constructivist approach produces many valuable and even paradigm-shifting insights which now often “fall by the wayside” and could be captured and transferred to the design community through a framework for design research.

3. Design research is reflective
   The process of knowledge acquisition in design is frequently referred to as "thinking through making.” However, for design to become research it is particularly helpful to be conscious about when/how reflection takes place and thus to communicate how theory and practice inform each other. Four decades ago, Donald Schön (1983) developed the concepts of “reflection-in-action” and “reflection-on-action”; reflection-in-action taking place during an action, and reflection-on- action taking place after an event has occurred. Designers typically engage in reflection-in- action, giving them the chance to redesign what is being done while it is being done and thus engage in methodological critique. While design research uses practice to examine underlying assumptions and the constructed nature of specific knowledge worlds, epistemology is more about reflection on action. This is achieved by scrutinizing the theories, concepts, and methods used to direct practice. By incorporating reflection both during and after action, design becomes research.

4. Design research is transferable
   For design research to advance prior understanding, it must be transferable. There is still no established consensus in the field regarding the importance of rigor in the transferability of knowledge, which is to date a significant challenge for the discipline. Pieter Jan Stappers & Elisa Giaccardi (2017), amongst others, have worked on a transfer through framings in types of research—for example in their labeling of designerly ways of doing research—but this is still insufficient, or rather insufficiently aligned with the research performed at DAE. DAE is uniquely placed, due to its renowned and flagship design projects, to develop a set of best practices to capture and disseminate epistemological ideas that arise from and through the design process and which can benefit the community worldwide.

While I outlined some criteria that, in my opinion, design research should at least partially adhere to, we will revise our thinking and add and/or rephrase criteria as over time it will become clear what design research at DAE entails. The eventual aim of this manifesto is to empower designers. I invite the DAE community to participate in building a framework for the fascinating research already conducted while constructing a body of knowledge.

Dr. Naomi Bueno de Mesquita

References
Bueno de Mesquita, N. (2022). Digital Performative Mapping [Doctoral dissertation, KU Leuven/ LUCA School of Arts]. KU Leuven Research Repository.

Gaver, W. (2012, June). What should we expect from research through design? CHI ’12: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 937–946. https://doi.org/10.1145/2207676.2208538

Schön, D. A. (1983). Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action. Basic Books. Schouwenberg, L., Kaethler , M. (2021). The Auto-Ethnographic Turn in Design. Valiz, Amsterdam.

Stappers, P. & Giaccardi, E. (2017) Research through Design. In Soegaard, M. & Friis-Dam, R. (eds.), The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction, 2nd edition.

Footnote:
1 A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise. Classic examples of wicked problems include economic, environmental, and political issues. Rittel and Webber coined the term in 1973 in the context of problems of social policy, an arena in which a purely scientific-engineering approach could not be applied because of the lack of a clear problem definition and differing perspectives of stakeholders.

Published: 2022