Abstract
This paper examines the epistemological and methodological dimensions of practice-based design research in the context of: the increasing institutional is ation of design research, increasing participation of design researchers in multidisciplinary teams, and the increased demands for impact-oriented research from universities and funders. Drawing on qualitative interviews with fifteen international design researchers, we explore how practitioners position making in design research, not only as a method of inquiry but as a central epistemic mode. Participants describe design research as situated, pluralistic, and processual. Design research is often marked by tensions between traditional academic expectations and the open-ended, embodied, and speculative nature of design practice. Through themes such as theory-practice oscillation, interdisciplinarity, prototyping as inquiry, and the challenges of articulating rigour in practice, we argue that these tensions are not limitations, but rather are generative features of the field that enable diverse possibilities. We propose furthering a lens of making epistemology as a productive framing to understand the unique forms of knowledge produced through design, and how this knowledge can be articulated in multi-disciplinary settings. Through this epistemic view, we continue to affirm that reflective, material engagement is a valid and vital mode of scholarly inquiry, while also enhancing the language we use as design-research practitioners to describe practice as knowledge. This orientation affirms practice as a way of knowing through offering perspectives from practitioner researchers, offering an expansive, con textually attuned, and critically engaged contribution to the contemporary design practice research discourse.
Keywords
Design practice research; Making-epistemology; Making; Research through Design
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.166
Citation
Page, R., Noches, P.,and Gomez-Hernandez, M.(2025) Primary Perspectives on Design Research: Making and Action-Oriented Epistemology in Design., in Chang, C.-Y., and Hsu, Y. (eds.), IASDR 2025: Design Next, 02-05 December, Taiwan. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2025.166
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Track 10 - Design Practices & Impacts
Primary Perspectives on Design Research: Making and Action-Oriented Epistemology in Design.
This paper examines the epistemological and methodological dimensions of practice-based design research in the context of: the increasing institutional is ation of design research, increasing participation of design researchers in multidisciplinary teams, and the increased demands for impact-oriented research from universities and funders. Drawing on qualitative interviews with fifteen international design researchers, we explore how practitioners position making in design research, not only as a method of inquiry but as a central epistemic mode. Participants describe design research as situated, pluralistic, and processual. Design research is often marked by tensions between traditional academic expectations and the open-ended, embodied, and speculative nature of design practice. Through themes such as theory-practice oscillation, interdisciplinarity, prototyping as inquiry, and the challenges of articulating rigour in practice, we argue that these tensions are not limitations, but rather are generative features of the field that enable diverse possibilities. We propose furthering a lens of making epistemology as a productive framing to understand the unique forms of knowledge produced through design, and how this knowledge can be articulated in multi-disciplinary settings. Through this epistemic view, we continue to affirm that reflective, material engagement is a valid and vital mode of scholarly inquiry, while also enhancing the language we use as design-research practitioners to describe practice as knowledge. This orientation affirms practice as a way of knowing through offering perspectives from practitioner researchers, offering an expansive, con textually attuned, and critically engaged contribution to the contemporary design practice research discourse.