Abstract
Early design research was driven by the ambition to create a coherent Science of Design – an ambition that was later abandoned in favour of a more pluralist approach. But despite great progress in the last 50 years, Design Research can still be criticised for being (1) too disconnected from design practice, (2) internally scattered and confused (3) not achieving the impact that was hoped for. In this paper we will discuss possible solutions to these conundrums by learning from three professional and academic fields: Marketing, Art Theory and Management, respectively. Based on these three discussions an attempt will be made to create an integrated answer by considering how design research and practice might come together in the creation of a new field, “Academic Design”.
Keywords
design research; design practice; academic design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.212
Citation
Dorst, K. (2016) Design practice and design research: finally together?, in Lloyd, P. and Bohemia, E. (eds.), Future Focused Thinking - DRS International Conference 2016, 27 - 30 June, Brighton, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2016.212
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Design practice and design research: finally together?
Early design research was driven by the ambition to create a coherent Science of Design – an ambition that was later abandoned in favour of a more pluralist approach. But despite great progress in the last 50 years, Design Research can still be criticised for being (1) too disconnected from design practice, (2) internally scattered and confused (3) not achieving the impact that was hoped for. In this paper we will discuss possible solutions to these conundrums by learning from three professional and academic fields: Marketing, Art Theory and Management, respectively. Based on these three discussions an attempt will be made to create an integrated answer by considering how design research and practice might come together in the creation of a new field, “Academic Design”.