Nigan Bayazit - Investigating Design: A Review of 40 years of Design Research
summary of design research history concerning design methods and scientific approaches to design.
-L. Bruce Archer definition of design research: “Design research is systematic inquiry whose goal is knowledge of, or in, the embodiment of configuration, composition, structure, purpose, value, and meaning in man-made things and systems.”
- Design research tries to answer the obligations of design to the humanities:
A. De. Re. is concerned with the physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how they work.
B. concerned with construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity.
C. concerned with what is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means.
D. concerned with the embodiment of configurations.
E. is a systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity.
-The objectives of design research: 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.
-Research through art & design consists of materials research, developmental work, and action research. Overall activities of design research are called “the sciences of the artificial.”
- reason of emergence of design methods in late‘50s and early ‘60s was the idea that the ways in which the large-scale NASA and military-type technological problems had been approached might profitably be transferred into civilian or other design areas.
- After WW2, new techniques that had been used in the design and development of arms and wartime equipment, and the methods and techniques used in developing many new inventions, attracted many designers.
During the 1960s, designers no longer could rely solely on their ability to focus upon the product as the center of a design task due to technological developments and the implications of mass production
1st Generation Design Methods:
- influence of systems analysis and systems theory on design established the grounds for the foundation of “systematic design methods”
- simplistic, not matured enough, and not capable of meeting the requirements of complex, real-world problems.
2nd Generation Design Methods:
- was about the user involvement in design decisions and the identification of their objectives
- compensate for the inadequacy of the first-generation design methods
Development of Scientific Research in Design:
- the first research studies in WW1 was the design of aircraft, to improve the performance of the product
- industrial fatigue research was important throughout 1920s
- Volkswagen was another initiator of performance studies
- made great contributions to the solutions of design problems during WW2, especially in the engineering disciplines
-cybernetics were developed during war became the model for rational behavior employed in economics
- during the Cold War, the U.S government supported environmental studies on topics such as windowless buildings, and school environmental research
Jessica Helfand - Method Designing: The Paradox of Modern Design Education
Institutions encourage new design students to become thinkers, consequently, younger designers are making designs that are too personal to them.
“Love the art in yourself, not yourself in the art.”
- students are making the mistake of believing that using their previous knowledge is an "objective" way to design
- students need to focus on the audience and asking difficult questions to try and give the audience what they want
- problem with method designing is not the students' problem, it’s the institution
- institutions in the attempt to get design students to think for themselves, have caused students to “love” themselves, and this is preventing students from producing universal or objective effective designs
- Helfand concluded the institutions should teach students to keep asking difficult questions, keep solving harder problems, keep inventing better worlds and to be true to themselves
Good news:
- to produce designers who can think for themselves, Helfand asked them to identify a method which becomes evident through their work.
- this authorship is a way to train young designers as thinkers and not service providers
- their work benefits from locating itself along a trajectory they've chosen and defined for themselves.
Bad news:
- there is a consequence from encouraging students to become thinkers
- paradoxically, “in being true to ourselves, we distance ourselves from a more universal truth”
Leedy,Paul D, Jeanne Ormrod- The problem: the heart of the research process
The heart of every research project is the problem and it's paramount to the success of the research effort. The statement of problem must first be expressed with precision and should then be divided into manageable sub-problems. This clarifies the goal+directions of entire research effort.
2 types of research:
- basic research (projects that advance human beings' theoretical conceptualizations about a certain topic)
- applied research (projects that inform human decision making about practical problems)
2 criteria for research problem:
- problem should address important question
- advance frontiers of knowledge
*to accomplish these, project must involve collection of data+ interpretation of data
4 situations to avoid when considering a research problem:
- research project shouldn't be a ruse for achieving self-enlightenment
- problem with purpose to compare 2 sets of data is not a good problem
- problems that result in yes or no
- calculating a coefficient of corelation between 2 sets of data to show their relationship
Finding the problem:
- look around you
- read the literature
- attend professional conferences
- seek the advice of experts
- choose a topic that motivates+intrigues you
- choose a topic others will find interesting
Stating the problem:
- state problem clearly+completely
- think through the feasibility of the project that the problem implies
- say precisely what you mean
- edit your work
