Research through design is a notion that gained presence in design discussions in the mid-aughts after a few influential papers by Jodi Forlizzi and John Zimmerman of Carnegie Mellon University and Erik Stolterman of Indiana University. The notion had been introduced by Christopher Frayling of the Royal College of Art in 1993 as a remark in a small paper that suggested it as a way to conduct research in a way that would be interesting to designers. It had its virtues. Above all, helped to make research interesting to designers, and it gave them a way to understand how design can create knowledge. Yet, it was confusing and hard to understand, as this presentation will illustrate. This was the case with other suggestions too, including British and Dutch notions like funology and doing research by doing design, and Donald Schon’s notion of the reflective practitioner that lacked precision,
In the context of these debates, I wanted to clarify to my students how designers can create knowledge. I wrapped up my work in Design Research through Practice, a book I published in 2011 with Stephan Wensveen, Johan Redström, Thomas Binder and John Zimmerman. This book contextualized the debate and suggested that there were three main ways in which design can contribute to knowledge. The first we called “the lab,” akin to experimental scientific methods with roots mostly in design engineering. The second we called “the field,” akin to ethnography but with roots mostly in participatory design, Silicon Valley, and IT industry. The third we called “the showroom,” with roots mostly in Italian radical design of the sixties, but also in critical design of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby. Each one of these three approaches has led to research programs that have expanded the field of design.
It is fair to say that this book and the debates it was a part of have shaped discussions about design research across the globe, and probably in a positive way – they have given designers tools to articulate their approach to design. These tools are more nuanced than the notions that preceded it, and they have so far avoided the pitfalls of previous efforts to introduce research into the design world.
Research never sleeps, however. This talk returns to the debate that gave rise to this book, currently under revision, and recontextualizes it to our current design (research) environment characterized by introspective approaches to design, systemic design, design fiction, critique of humanism, and most recently by GenAI – among other things.
I believe the debates of the nineties and the aughts provide us with tools to see these discussions as useful extensions rather than as alternatives or challenges, and I will conclude with a positive note: in less than 30 years, the design community has found ways for conduct design research in ways that feel right to designers. Research, in turn, has also learned to contribute to design practice by giving it tools for expansion and for understanding better its contribution to society and increasingly to nature.