Design Research Quarterly Volume 3, Issue 3
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Design Research Society DRS Digital Library Design Research Quarterly DRS Archive 1-7-2008 Design Research Quarterly Volume 3, Issue 3 Peter Storkerson Follow this and additional works at: https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/design-research-quarterly Recommended Citation Storkerson, Peter, "Design Research Quarterly Volume 3, Issue 3" (2008). Design Research Quarterly. 8. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/design-research-quarterly/8 This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the DRS Archive at DRS Digital Library. It has been accepted for inclusion in Design Research Quarterly by an authorized administrator of DRS Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected]. COMMUNICATION V.3:3 July 2008 www.designresearchsociety.org Design Research Society ISSN 1752-8445 RESEARCH II Jorge Frascara and Dietmar Winkler On Design Research Jorge Frascara, Dietmar Winkler Editor’s Introduction: Table of Contents: Communication design, generally, is an outlier in the larger field of design, by virtue of its non-participation in empirical research and its lack of interest in the Article: kind of accountability to performance that is taken for granted elsewhere. DRQ 1 Jorge Frascara and Dietmar Winkler on is presenting articles to examine communication design and its relationship to Design Research research and disciplinarity, particularly with regard to education. The last issue examined design education within the institutional context of 3 From the Editor university art schools and departments. In this issue, we have an overview of communication design education and research from two senior communication Listings: design educators and practitioners: a colloquy that links a vision of the social goals 15 Current Research in Design: Tables of and responsibilities that can give communication design significance with actual Contents from Leading and operational requirements of research informed practice and education. Design Journals Jorge Frascara and Dietmar Winkler on Design 23 Upcoming Events Worldwide Research Artemis Yagou Jorge Frascara discussed elsewhere (Frascara 2007) some of the many ways in DRQ-DRS which visual communication design practice, education and research fall short 2 Publication information of meeting the needs of society. In the following article Dietmar Winkler (DRW) and Jorge Frascara (JF) will further elaborate on the problem, to outline some of 24 DRQ subscription the ways in which design research could – or should – develop. In the process, DRS Membership information indispensable references to the current state of design education and practice will surface, as ways to recognize the three fronts on which change should happen. DRW: An Achievable Social Contract for this Century: One emancipated step for design education and practice … and mankind, because it is much too urgent to postpone till tomorrow. Vision without action is merely a dream, action without vision is merely passing time, but action with vision can change the world. Nelson Mandela All disciplines go through evolutionary stages. At the end of the last century, design’s conceptual thinking, was still anchored in the knowledge of tradition- al technical guilds and the aesthetics of the decorative arts. Design is still pri- marily providing visualization and formatting skills. The assortment of projects Continued p. 4 Q Design Research Quarterly Publication Information Editor: Editorial Advisory Board: Dr. Peter Storkerson Prof. Ken Friedman, Chair Norwegian School of Management, Norway and Danmarks Associate Editors: Designskole, Denmark Dr. Vesna Popovic Dr. Antti Ainamo Queensland University of Technology, Australia Helsinki School of Economics, Finland Dr. Kristina Niedderer Prof. Tevfik Balcioglu Hertfordshire University, UK Izmir University of Economics, Turkey Dr. Artemis Yagou Prof. Lin-Lin Chen AKTO Art and Design, Greece National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan Prof. Nigel Cross Open University, UK Prof. Clive Dilnot Parsons The New School for Design, USA Design Research Quarterly is is a peer reviewed journal, published Dr. Troels Degn Johansson in January, April, July and October by the Design Research Society. Denmark’s Design School, Denmark Prof. Pekka Korvenmaa Design Research Quarterly and its contents are published under University of Art and Design, University of Art and Design, the Creative Commons Attribution - Noncommercial - NoDerivs 3.0 Finland License. < http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ > Prof. Kun-Pyo Lee You are free to Share—to copy, distribute and transmit the journal or Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Korea journal articles. Under the following conditions: Dr. Joao Lutz 1 Attribution UniverCidade, Brazil e You must attribute work in the manner specified by the author or Prof. Sanjoy Mazumdar licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you University of California at Irvine, USA or your use of the work). Prof. Donald Norman 2 Noncommercial Nielsen Norman Group and Northwestern University, USA e You may not use any part of this journal or work in it for com- Prof. Sharon Poggenpohl mercial purposes. Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China 3 No Derivative Works Prof. M.P. Ranjan e You may not alter, transform, or build upon any part of this jour- National Institute of Design, India nal or work in it. Dr. Elizabeth B.-N. Sanders MakeTools, USA Prof. Marian Sauthoff Design Research Quarterly is archived on-line: www.drsq.org. University of Pretoria, South Africa Dr. Chris Smith We solicit your contributions: papers and articles on design research. London Metropolitan University, UK For information regarding submissions, contact Prof. Toshiharu Taura Peter Storkerson, [email protected] Kobe University, Japan Prof. Necdet Teymur Emeritus, Middle East Technical University, Turkey Design Research Quarterly 3:3 Jul. 2008 – 2 – www.designresearchsociety.org From the Editor: Discovering What We Don’t Know Peter Storkerson As we know, disciplines are not simply collections of facts, Middletown was widely read, and it transformed Ameri- findings, or things known. They are also objects of study in cans’ pictures of themselves ‘telling Americans “who we are,” themselves. Any student of a discipline studies not only the “what we want,” and “what we believe.”’ (Igo p.3) Middletown knowledge contributed by the field but the field itself. A dis- is credited as instrumental to the emergence of mass society, cipline enframes and transforms the knowledge it compris- not just by what it found, but by social construction: creating es, by providing a taxonomy, defining interrelations between a self-fulfilling social belief in the existence of “averageness” its taxa and, in particular, by defining what is inside and as that mass society. It also permanently altered the rhetoric of outside of its domain, thus, what should be studied or dis- discourse on social issues to one in which popular beliefs could regarded, how it should be studied, and what can be done be trumped by data. with the results. Middletown revealed averageness as a realm of inquiry that As a communication designer, I have long been mysti- had been in plain sight, waiting to be looked at. The earlier in- fied by my field’s lack of disciplinary interest in the processes terests in problems such as deviance were not displaced but in- at its heart: how the configuring of abstract elements in space corporated and subsumed under more comprehensive categories and time constructs meaning. Without a disciplinary container, of grounded social theory that developed into a new, powerful knowledge is borrowed and syncretic, an admixture of practical technology supporting a broad range of social analysis and en- experiences and facts appearing sui generis, without reasoning gineering for a broad variety of purposes: a discipline. or dialogue. No matter how many such fragments are brought How might this apply to design? One common notion of together, they do not themselves produce a whole. design, as a pragmatic approach to addressing problems (rather Nevertheless, there is no interest in a disciplinary under- than a systematic, disciplinary study of human interface) looks standing of of communication design. It is as if there is no need like the social science interest in problems and deviance pre- for it, or it is trivial, or it is invisible. ceding the leap. Communication design seems further behind, Sarah Igo’s ‘The Averaged American’ (Igo, 2007) describes at the time when norms were the teachings of the churches, the origin of a new discipline in sociology: the empirical study and the received knowledge of the ancients. In the main, its ap- of norms of behavior and beliefs in one’s own society. The major proaches are intuitionist: its teachings based on traditions; its event defining the arrival of this new discipline is a still famous instructional methods based on the atelier tradition of learning 1929 study, ‘Middletown’ by Robert and Helen Lind. It was a from the master. an overview of the town of Muncie Indiana based on historical What caused, the leap taken by Middletown? Igo attributes studies and survey research. it to ‘several streams—scientific, institutional, commercial, and Surveys were not new, but they had been focused on ag- cultural” … ‘and from the waging of war to the expansion of gregate data (census), or on problems such as deviance or mar- national media.’ (Igo p.8), that is, the forces of modernization. ginal groups: ‘accident prevention, child welfare,