Research Methodologies Reading No.2

Investigating Design: A Review of Forty Years of Design Research

by Nigan Bayazit

The objectives of design research are the study, research, and investigation of the artificial made by human beings, and the way these activities have been directed either in academic studies or manufacturing organizations. This paper provides a summary of design research history concerning design methods and scientific approaches to design.

Design research tries to

answer the obligations of design to the humanities:

1. Design research is concerned with the physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how they work.
2. Design research is concerned with construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity.
3. Design research is concerned with what is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means.
4. Design research is concerned with the embodiment of configurations.
5. Design research is a systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity.

First Generation Design Methods

• The influence of systems analysis and systems theory on design established the grounds for the foundation of “systematic design methods”
• First-generation design methods were simplistic, not matured enough, and not capable of meeting the requirements of complex, real-world problems.

Second Generation Design Methods

• User participation to P&D is a very wide and comprehensive subject, with its political, ideological, psychological, managerial, administrative, legal and economical aspects in relation to various countries.
• These second-generation design methods began to compensate for the inadequacy of the first-generation design methods.
• The success of the participatory design process depended on the designer’s awareness of user values, and obliged professionals to collaborate with social scientists as well as anthropologists to carry out design research. There were some obstacles in the application of participatory design in larger-scale projects, such as those in urban planning.

The period after about 1967 until today and especially in the seventies, can be labeled as the prime time for the initial development of design science. There was a close relationship between design research and the developments in the IT field, especially in cognitive sciences, and “artificial intelligence” (AI) and expert systems. Design theoreticians such as L. Bruce Archer46 and Gordon Pask47 saw the similarities between designers’ design behavior and the organisms’ self-control systems, and developed their own theories accordingly. The study of human performance and man-machine relationship developed great momentum. Ergonomics and work-study were well known by many people, and applied to designs during the war.

In 1980, the Design: Science: Method Conference was organized at Portsmouth, in which design research and the contribution of science to design were the subjects of discussion. The 1980s and 1990s opened a new era in design research. Many U.S. departments of design began to establish new academic research units, which were brought about from the government’s release of funds on design research, and the encouragement and demand by American industry.

Between 1986 and 1993, the Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology began to issue the Design Processes Newsletter, edited by Charles Owen. That newsletter was concerned with design research approaches of ID, design management, and design policy.

Significant growth in all areas of design research took place during the 1990s. New professional demands on design research, and the new educational confrontations for restructuring knowledge changed the context of design. The history of design research with reference to design methodologies, as well as design science, is a wide and comprehensive subject that needs additional extensive research.