Abstract
The meaning of design and the approaches to design activities are distinctive for practitioners of different design disciplines and other disciplines. In this article, the authors report a document case study where social scientists, design researchers, and community partners (fire leaders and personnel of four fire departments in the US) collaborated on a research project with a design component, aiming to create technologies and services for fire departments in the US. In analyzing the process and engaging in reflection, we identified our overlapping but distinct approaches. Social scientists adopted a community-engaged research approach, and design researchers adopted a strategic design approach. While everyone tried to combine analytical and intuitive work modes, the specific assumptions and work cultures showed contrasting views of the design activities of framing, sense-making, and visioning. This case provides signals to continue further exploration of the integration of community-engaged research and strategic design.
Keywords
interdisciplinarity; strategic design; community-engaged research; design activities
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.307
Citation
Mejía, M., Pine, K.,and Mandhre, R.(2025) Interdisciplinary tensions in the integration of strategic design and community-engaged research practices., IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taipei, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.307
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 10 - Design Practices & Impacts
Interdisciplinary tensions in the integration of strategic design and community-engaged research practices
The meaning of design and the approaches to design activities are distinctive for practitioners of different design disciplines and other disciplines. In this article, the authors report a document case study where social scientists, design researchers, and community partners (fire leaders and personnel of four fire departments in the US) collaborated on a research project with a design component, aiming to create technologies and services for fire departments in the US. In analyzing the process and engaging in reflection, we identified our overlapping but distinct approaches. Social scientists adopted a community-engaged research approach, and design researchers adopted a strategic design approach. While everyone tried to combine analytical and intuitive work modes, the specific assumptions and work cultures showed contrasting views of the design activities of framing, sense-making, and visioning. This case provides signals to continue further exploration of the integration of community-engaged research and strategic design.