Abstract
Research is undertaken to produce knowledge. Typically, research is divided into two classes – applied research intended to result in a useful and probably commercial outcome, and basic research which normally endeavour s to extend the horizons of the known in the quest for knowledge that may one day have a purpose. Sometimes basic research is curiosity-driven; it is exploration of new or poorly-known territories, a path that design may also take. On many accounts, design is excluded from the domain of research – although it is inherently present to the extent that experiments are designed. The real presence of design in the spectrum of research activities, however, comes about from its ability to produce knowledge. Although designers must constantly use knowledge that has been produced by researchers, both in other fields and from within their own disciplinary realms, the expectation of designing that it culminates with a product or an application, gives rise to a simple account which portrays designers only as somehow using knowledge produced by the research of science and transforming it into a desired object or other outcome. Hopefully this is the case, but this paper examines what else happens in this process.
Citation
Downton, P. (2004) The Azure Sky, The Design Made., in Redmond, J., Durling, D. and de Bono, A (eds.), Futureground - DRS International Conference 2004, 17-21 November, Melbourne, Australia. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2004/researchpapers/15
The Azure Sky, The Design Made.
Research is undertaken to produce knowledge. Typically, research is divided into two classes – applied research intended to result in a useful and probably commercial outcome, and basic research which normally endeavour s to extend the horizons of the known in the quest for knowledge that may one day have a purpose. Sometimes basic research is curiosity-driven; it is exploration of new or poorly-known territories, a path that design may also take. On many accounts, design is excluded from the domain of research – although it is inherently present to the extent that experiments are designed. The real presence of design in the spectrum of research activities, however, comes about from its ability to produce knowledge. Although designers must constantly use knowledge that has been produced by researchers, both in other fields and from within their own disciplinary realms, the expectation of designing that it culminates with a product or an application, gives rise to a simple account which portrays designers only as somehow using knowledge produced by the research of science and transforming it into a desired object or other outcome. Hopefully this is the case, but this paper examines what else happens in this process.