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Building a Design Research Community

by Victor Margolin
More than one hundred and fifty years have passed since the British design promoter
Henry Cole first published the Journal of Design and Manufacture. The journal, which lasted for
only two years, was one of the first attempts within the emerging field of design to create a
vehicle for design discourse; that is, for conversation about what design is and might be. The
articles, similar to other design writing at the time, were opinionated and filled with moral
judgments about design quality.
One might expect to trace a steady development of design thinking from that time until
today but, in fact, this has not been the case. Only since the early 1960s have attempts been
made to ground design thinking in a more systematic method and to introduce the idea of
design research into the discursive process. We have seen the appearance of scholarly journals
and societies for the promotion of research and are now at a point where research has become
a dominant topic at design conferences, coupled with new questions about what a doctoral
degree in design or design studies might consist of. In the spirit of pluralism that characterized
the selection of papers for this conference, I would like to offer some thoughts about what a
research culture for design might look like. I will make reference to notions of research in other
fields and disciplines and raise questions about how useful those notions are in constructing a
research culture for design.
Design, as various scholars have suggested, is a contingent practice whose techniques,
goals, and objectives are continually changing. What is fixed about design is that it is an art of
conception and planning whose end result is a product, whether that product is a material object
or an immaterial service or system. Design is also an integrative activity that, in its broadest
sense, draws together knowledge from multiple fields and disciplines to achieve particular
results. It has both a semantic dimension and a technical or operative one.
There have been debates in the past about whether design is a science or a discipline
with strict rules for the production of legitimate knowledge. These debates are yet to be resolved
because a designed product has multiple dimensions which need to be accounted for. Design
research is not only concerned with the techniques for planning and giving form to a product but
also with use. Since products are made for people, the user response to a product is an
essential part of the research field. Because the subject of design research, then, is not only
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products but also the human response to them, the research techniques for design must of
necessity be diverse.
When considering the organization of a future research community, it is also necessary
to take into account the existing organizations that have been created for the purpose of design
research and consider ways that they might be brought into closer relation with each other.
Because these organizations have arisen to meet different needs such as education,
production, and marketing, they have not developed in a coordinated way and some of them
have even seemed to be at odds with each other. The question of where design history, for
example, fits into a larger culture of design research has been on the table for some time and
has not yet been addressed. The challenge to an emerging culture of design research is to
accommodate multiple modes of investigation that derive from the humanities, social sciences,
and the natural sciences. This is a rather unique challenge for a research community since the
models that exist tend to be based on only one of these modes. Because design research
draws on knowledge from so many fields, the construction of a research culture poses particular
challenges that, one might argue, are almost without precedent.
However, if we as design researchers can meet this challenge, we will have
accomplished something that few, if any, other fields or disciplines have achieved; that is, the
integration of multiple types of knowledge within a research culture of diverse scholars who
nonetheless share a related set of questions and issues. To accomplish this, we need not use
the model of an established discipline in order to create our own standards. Historically this has
resulted in a series of problems, particularly where emerging social sciences, for example,
attempted to model themselves on the natural sciences and, as a result, created overly rigid
research paradigms. These paradigms privileged knowledge that appeared most like that of the
natural sciences and marginalized knowledge that was more interpretive or subjective. Even
though disciplines such as economics and sociology originally gave the highest credence to
quantitative research, today, due in part to the influence of French post-structuralism, rhetoric,
and other theories that have challenged the objectivity of knowledge, they are much more
pluralistic, even though some give less credence to anything other than statistical research than
others. Sociology, for example, now gives greater value to historians and others who work in a
more interpretive mode. Theory, within sociology, still retains an historical base and the grand
theorists of the pastDurkheim, Weber, and Pareto, to name the most prominentstill serve as
viable models for the construction of contemporary theory. Some sociologists like Anthony
Giddens are concerned with macro-theory, while others do empirical work in particular
communities. When issues, rather than methods, are central research concerns, then it is
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possible to acknowledge different modes of research and give them value in terms of their
contributions to a particular question or set of questions. Sociology is big enough to
accommodate scholars with different interests ranging from history and theory to empirical
investigation.
By contrast, the community of social work researchers has tried to legitimate itself by
following a model that privileges empirical research and relegates other types of investigation to
the margins. Students who are working for a PhD in social work, at least in American
universities, are usually expected to do a research study that involves statistical analysis. Of
course, there is concern about the legitimacy of the questions on which the study is based, but
the demonstration of a particular method, that most valued in the hard sciences, is encouraged.
The history of social work is taught in PhD degree programs, generally not by historians but by
those trained in other areas. There is a PhD track for social policy but those oriented to this area
are generally expected to do quantitative dissertations.
Where sociology and anthropology are practices of investigation, social work is a
practice of service delivery, similar to design. Social workers also need to organize methods to
provide services just as designers need to create processes for designing products. Within
social work education, students who are preparing to be practitioners need a variety of
knowledge ranging from history and policy to techniques of practice. To train a well-rounded
practitioner, it might be argued, it would be best to expose students to experts in these various
areas but if all PhD candidates are obliged to do quantitative research, then those who end up
teaching history and policy to students will not be doing so with as strong a background as they
might have obtained had they been able to do their doctoral research in those areas.
A model of privileging empirical work holds true in engineering as well. With the
exception of a few scholars from fields such as philosophy and political science who teach in
Science, Technology, and Society programs at some engineering schools, most schools do not
have faculty trained in the history, theory, and policy of technology. Consequently, students
have no exposure to these areas. There is, of course, an active community of historians of
technology, as exemplified in the United States by the excellent articles published in the journal
Technology and Culture, but this community has developed on its own terms and has not made
a great impact on the content of engineering education.
Design need not follow these models, both of which place the highest value on empirical
research methods. I want to argue here for a practitioner who can bring different kinds of
knowledge to bear on a design problem, If anything, one might contend that design has not had
enough empirical research but I believe, that as we move forward with the development of a
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research culture and find ways to make empirical data useful to designers and design teams,
we need to keep in mind the value of other kinds of knowledge, particularly knowledge that is
more interpretive.
What is at stake in the creation of this new research culture, is an enlarged
understanding of how design contributes to a greater sense of human well being, both
individually and collectively. Despite a world filled to the brim with products, including those
addressing visual communication such as billboards and signage systems, we still have only a
sporadic sense of what kinds of policies might yield the most valuable design results. For the
most part, product innovation is driven by market demand even though some design
development such as traffic safety signs falls within the sphere of support for social services.
Therefore, we can only measure design excellence by what has been produced thus far rather
than by what we imagine might be produced.
Design research as I see it has two functions; one is increase our knowledge of how to
make products and what, in fact, might be made and the other is to improve our understanding
of how products function as part of the social world. The first function relates to the practice of
design while the second links design understanding to the larger project, in which the social
sciences and humanities participate, of understanding the dynamics and aims of human society.
In order to address the first function, many different kinds of knowledge are needed. If we are to
move the question of what is to be designed outside the confines of market-driven concerns,
then we need ways of understanding better the relation of design to the satisfaction of human
purposes. We are actually quite good at producing certain kinds of productsentertainment
devices, furniture, and electronic appliancesbut we have not done very well in designing
others such as efficient means of transportation, products that put less strain on the body,
objects that are simple to operate, and things that make more ecologically sound use of
materials and components. We have done little to explore the systems of product support and
disposal that would result in a more ecologically sound environment, nor have we thought
enough about all the different motivations human beings have for acquiring and using products.
Product acquisition and use is also integral to the construction of social identity and much more
needs to be learned about this. As well, we need far better wayfinding devices to orient us as
we move more and more frequently in unfamiliar territory.
There is no question that advances in technology are primary drivers of product
development and we are now moving into an era where many questions are being raised about
how to share social tasks with increasingly intelligent machines. As more research is done on
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the mechanical aspects of these machines, we need to increase our understanding of how
these new interfaces have the potential to contribute to our welfare.
Only by taking an integrative approach to design research will we be able to address
questions that are becoming increasingly complex. What role should smart machines play in
society? What are the implications of building smart houses that link many different functions to
a central computing unit? What are the real effects on the human psyche of a greater
engagement with computer technology? These are but a few of the questions that call for
answers. And the best way to gain such answers will be to integrate many strands of specialist
research.
Currently within the community of design researchers, we have no institutional structures
for achieving such integration. Doctoral education is, of course, a very new phenomenon and
we are yet to understand its relation to a wider research culture. But the way we structure such
education will be extremely important as a means of providing new models of research. If we
are not to make the mistakes that have been made in the social work and engineering
professions, for example, we will foster a rich research culture that remains open to the
contributions from many different types of design research. We need no hierarchy of methods,
only a strategy for drawing on the work that various researchers do. What is crucial to the
development of this culture, is the posing of important questions. Thus far, the field of design
research has lacked these. At times, particular groups, such as the design methods researchers
in the 1960s, formulated questions that they expected to become paradigms for the field.
However, in the case of the design methods movement, the research strategy was too limited
and thus the questions central to design methods never achieved comparable importance for
the design field as a whole.
There is now an increasing number of conferences on design research ranging from
design management to eco-design and artificial intelligence but as yet we have no forum where
all these strands of research can come together. When we look to other fields such as
anthropology and sociology, we note that national and international professional associations
have existed for many years and that the meetings of these associations have been places
where research is shared. Such meetings, by virtue of sessions organized by members, are
sites where experience is tested, new questions are proposed, and conflicting arguments are
debated. While consensus in an entire field or discipline is neither possible nor desirable, an
arena for discourse is essential. Every group of researchers needs a place within which to
survey the range of questions that are being raised in the field and to participate in the debates
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that grow up around them. There is a need for a social body that somehow creates a space for
a disciplines discourse without preventing anyone from speaking.
What we now have in design as I see it is a number of separate discursive fields which
never or rarely come into relation with one another. There are journals such as Design Studies
and Design Issues, which have cut across these fields to some degree but without the
opportunity to present ones research to a live audience of colleagues, it is difficult to generate
the kinds of immediate response and discussion that lead to more refined arguments and
propositions.
As I have already mentioned, the community of design researchers is currently made up
of sub-communities that develop their own questions, methods, and discursive strategies
without relation to the others. Design history, as previously mentioned, has never been allied
with the research fields that are more closely related to practice. It has been related instead to
other fields that connect more to the second function of design research that I mentioned the
understanding of design in society. But there is also a role for historians to play in contributing to
a more effective practice. To better understand what this role might be would require an
engagement with other design researchers. Until now, the Design History Society in Britain, as
well as other organizations of design historians have had little engagement with research
groups such as the Design Research Society, and groups that study ergonomics, eco-design, or
design management. Likewise, those focusing on management have not tended to consider a
closer relation to more technically oriented or historically oriented researchers.
In the larger sense, the practices of designing and using tend to go unexamined. A much
denser research culture would help us respond on a much deeper level to product innovations
by thoroughly studying their effect on society. Design research must also account for the
practice-led courses that lead to new products. Since design is ultimately about making things
the demonstration of new possibilities is an important contribution.
Assuming that we agree on the value of a research culture that generates a collective
process of investigation and facilitates the integration of new knowledge, how do we then work
toward this goal. One way is to do just what we have done at this conference, provide a
discursive space for researchers with different interests and methods to present together. From
such experiences, questions for further investigation will arise and conference participants will
begin to get a sense of what a larger, more diverse, research culture might be like.
A second approach is to consider whether a long-established organization such as the
Design Research Society might open itself up to a wider range of researchers than it now
includes. If the DRS became the primary organization for researchers, it could well serve as the
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pluralistic forum I am calling for. A third approach is to create university programs that can train
researchers with different specialties. We need cadres of researchers who specialize in different
aspects of design, whether they are historical, sociological, anthropological, or technical.
What is most important is to understand that a research culture can not be designed
from the top down by legislating aims and methods for everyone. It has to grow from the bottom
up, through extensive discussion and debate. Until now, design researchers have lacked the
forum for a broad engagement with multiple strands of research. If we can create such a forum,
we can begin to mature as a research community. We will not only produce higher quality
practitioners and educational programs, but well also introduce design research more
effectively into the wider field of research on human culture and the achievement of personal
and collective well-being.
Copyright 2000 Victor Margolin. All rights reserved.
First published as "Building a Design Research Community," in Design Plus Research:
Proceedings of the Politecnico di Milano Conference, May 18-20, 2000, edited by Silvia
Pizzocaro, Amilton Arruda and Dijon De Moraes (Milan: Politecnico di Milano, 2000).