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Editorial Forty Years of Design Research Editorial Forty years of design research he 40th anniversary of the founding of the which seemed to convince American scientists Design Research Society fell in 2006, and and engineers that they lacked creativity.) The Tthus provided a suitable moment to reflect 1960s also saw the beginnings of computer pro- on the first forty years of design research. From grams for problem solving. The first design the very beginning, the purpose of the DRS has al- methods or methodology books appeared e Asi- ways been stated clearly in its aims: ‘to promote mow (1962), Alexander (1964), Archer (1965), the study of and research into the process of de- Jones (1970) e and the first creativity books e signing in all its many fields’. Its purpose therefore Gordon (1961), Osborn (1963). is to act as a form of learned society, taking a do- main independent view of the process of A statement by Bruce Archer (1965) encapsulated designing. what was going on: ‘The most fundamental chal- lenge to conventional ideas on design has been The emergence of the Society lay in the success of the growing advocacy of systematic methods of the first ‘Conference on Design Methods’, which problem solving, borrowed from computer tech- was held in London in 1962 (Jones and Thornley, niques and management theory, for the assess- 1963). That conference is generally regarded as the ment of design problems and the development of event which marked the launch of design method- design solutions.’ And Herbert Simon (1969) es- ology as a subject or field of enquiry, and the ‘de- tablished the foundations for ‘a science of design’, sign methods movement’. In the UK the new which would be ‘a body of intellectually tough, movement developed through further conferences analytic, partly formalizable, partly empirical, in the 1960s e ‘The Design Method’ in Birming- teachable doctrine about the design process.’ In ham, 1965 (Gregory, 1966), and ‘Design Methods some senses, there was a desire to ‘scientise’ design in Architecture’, in Portsmouth, 1967 (Broadbent in the 1960s. and Ward, 1969). However, the 1970s became notable for the The origins of new design methods in the 1960s lay rejection of design methodology by many, includ- further back in the application of novel, ‘scientific’ ing some of the early pioneers. Christopher Alex- methods to the novel and pressing problems of the ander said: ‘I’ve disassociated myself from the 2nd World War e from which came operational re- field. There is so little in what is called ‘‘design search methods and management decision-mak- methods’’ that has anything useful to say about ing techniques e and in the development of how to design buildings that I never even read creativity techniques in the 1950s. (The latter the literature anymore. I would say forget it, for- was partly, in the USA, in response to the launch get the whole thing’ (Alexander, 1971). And of the first satellite, the Soviet Union’s ‘Sputnik’, J. Christopher Jones said: ‘In the 1970s I reacted www.elsevier.com/locate/destud 0142-694X $ - see front matter Design Studies 28 (2007) 1e4 doi:10.1016/j.destud.2006.11.004 1 Ó 2006 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Printed in Great Britain against design methods. I dislike the machine lan- designers are partners with the problem ‘owners’ guage, the behaviourism, the continual attempt to (clients, customers, users, the community). How- fix the whole of life into a logical framework’ ever, this approach seemed to be more relevant (Jones, 1977). to architecture and planning than engineering and industrial design, and meanwhile these fields These were pretty harsh things for the founding fa- were still developing their methodologies in some- thers to say about their offspring, and were poten- what different directions. tially devastating to those who were still nurturing the infant. To put the quotations of Alexander and Engineering design methodology of the systematic Jones into context it may be necessary to recall the variety developed strongly in the 1980s; for exam- social/cultural climate of the late-1960s e the cam- ple, through ICED e the series of International pus revolutions, the new liberal humanism and re- Conferences on Engineering Design. The early de- jection of previous values. But also it had to be velopments were especially strong in Germany acknowledged that there had been a lack of suc- and Japan. (Although there may still have been cess in the application of ‘scientific’ methods to de- only limited evidence of practical applications and sign. Fundamental issues were also raised by results.) A series of books on engineering design Rittel and Webber (1973), who characterised de- methods and methodology began to appear. Just sign and planning problems as ‘wicked’ problems, to mention some English-language ones, these in- fundamentally un-amenable to the techniques of cluded Hubka (1982), Pahl and Beitz (1984), science and engineering, which dealt with ‘tame’ French (1985), Cross (1989),andPugh (1991). problems. It should also be acknowledged that in the USA Design methodology was saved, however, by there were some important developments in de- Horst Rittel’s (1973) proposal of ‘generations’ sign theory and methodology, including the pub- of methods. He suggested that the developments lications of the Design Methods Group and the of the 1960s had been only ‘first generation’ continuing series of conferences of the Environ- methods (which naturally, with hindsight, mental Design Research Association (EDRA). seemed a bit simplistic, but nonetheless had The National Science Foundation initiative on been a necessary beginning) and that a new sec- design theory and methods (perhaps in response ond generation was beginning to emerge. This to German and Japanese progress e like the ear- suggestion was clever, because it let the method- lier response to Sputnik?) led to substantial growth ologists escape from their commitment to inade- in engineering design methodology in the quate ‘first generation’ methods, and it opened late-1980s. The American Society of Mechanical a vista of an endless future of generation upon Engineers (ASME) launched its series of confer- generation of new methods. ences on Design Theory and Methodology. Where the first generation of design methods was In fact, after the doubts of the 1970s, the 1980s based on the application of systematic, rational, saw a period of substantial consolidation of de- ‘scientific’ methods, the second generation moved sign research. The constraining link with sci- away from attempts to optimise and from the om- ence was severed at the DRS conference on nipotence of the designer (especially for ‘wicked Design:Science:Method in 1980 (Jacques and problems’), towards recognition of satisfactory Powell, 1981). Historical and current develop- or appropriate solutions (Herbert Simon had ments in design methodology were recorded even introduced the notion of ‘satisficing’) and in Cross (1984). A particularly significant devel- an ‘argumentative’, participatory process in which opment was the emergence of the first journals 2 Design Studies Vol 28 No. 1 January 2007 of design research. Just to refer, again, to Design Journal, the Journal of Design Research, English-language publications, DRS initiated and CoDesign. There has also been a major Design Studies in 1979, Design Issues appeared growth in conferences, with not only a continuing in 1984, and Research in Engineering Design in series by DRS, but also series such as Design 1989. Some significant books also appeared, Thinking, Doctoral Education in Design, Design with a new emphasis on design cognition sig- Computing and Cognition, Design and Emotion, nalled from the architectural field in Lawson’s European Academy, and the Asian Design Con- How Designers Think (1980) and Rowe’s De- ferences, etc. Design research now operates on sign Thinking (1987). a truly international scale, acknowledged in the cooperation of DRS with the Asian design re- In the 1980s we saw the establishment of design as search societies in the founding in 2005 of the a coherent discipline of study in its own right, International Association of Societies of Design based on the view that design has its own things Research. DRS itself celebrated its 40th anniver- to know and its own ways of knowing them. sary with its largest conference yet, in Lisbon, Por- This had been heralded in the very first issue of De- tugal, in November 2006, for which this brief, and sign Studies, when we launched a series of articles partial, history was prepared. on ‘Design as a Discipline’. Bruce Archer again encapsulated the view in stating his new belief Forty years on, design research is alive and well, that ‘there exists a designerly way of thinking and living in an increasing number of places. and communicating that is both different from sci- entific and scholarly ways of thinking and commu- nicating, and as powerful as scientific and scholarly methods of enquiry when applied to its References own kinds of problems’ (Archer, 1979). A little Alexander, C (1964) Notes on the Synthesis of Form later, expanding the idea, Cross (1982) suggested Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA Alexander, C (1971) The state of the art in design that ‘We need a research programme . At its methods DMG Newsletter Vol 5 No 3 pp 3e7 e core is a ‘touch-stone theory’ or idea in our Archer, L B (1965) Systematic Method for Designers case the view that ‘‘there are designerly ways of The Design Council, London knowing’’.’ (For further development of such Archer, L B (1979) Whatever became of design a programme see Cross, 2006.)
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