|
Design Researcher
Design research was originally constituted as primarily research into the process of design, developing from work in design methods, but the concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of design, including work concerned with the context of designing and research-based design practice. The concept retains a sense of generality, aimed at understanding and improving design processes and practices quite broadly, rather than developing domain-specific knowledge within any professional field of design. Origins Design research emerged as a recognisable field of study in the 1960s, initially marked by a conference on Design methods at Imperial College London, in 1962. It led to the founding of the Design Research Society (DRS) in 1966. John Christopher Jones (one of the initiators of the 1962 conference) founded a postgraduate Design Research Laboratory at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, and L. Bruce Archer supported by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Methods
Design methods are procedures, techniques, aids, or tools for designing. They offer a number of different kinds of activities that a designer might use within an overall design process. Conventional procedures of design, such as drawing, can be regarded as design methods, but since the 1950s new procedures have been developed that are more usually grouped together under the name of "design methods". What design methods have in common is that they "are attempts to make public the hitherto private thinking of designers; to ''externalise'' the design process". ''Design methodology'' is the broader study of method in design: the study of the principles, practices and procedures of designing. Background Design methods originated in new approaches to problem solving developed in the mid-20th Century, and also in response to industrialisation and mass-production, which changed the nature of designing. A "Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Design Society
The Design Society is an international non-governmental, non-profit organisation with a focus on engineering design. The Design Society is a charitable body, registered in Scotland under the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator, number SC 031694. The Design Society's flagship event is the biennial International Conference in Engineering Design (ICED). History The Design Society was founded in 2000 building on the previous activities of the Workshop Design Konstruktion (WDK) group, especially the organisation of the ICED series of conferences held since 1981. The WDK group was an informally constituted international association based on a common interest in engineering design and founded in the early 1980s on the inspiration of Professors Vladimir Hubka, Mogens Myrup Andreasen, and Umberto Pighini. The Design Society took over activities and responsibilities of WDK in 2001. The Design Society was constituted as a Charity under Scottish law and was incorporated as a Company Li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Researchers
A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design'' expresses the process of developing a design. In some cases, the direct construction of an object without an explicit prior plan (such as in craftwork, some engineering, coding, and graphic design) may also be considered to be a design activity. The design usually has to satisfy certain goals and constraints; may take into account aesthetic, functional, economic, or socio-political considerations; and is expected to interact with a certain environment. Typical examples of designs include architectural and engineering drawings, circuit diagrams, sewing patterns and less tangible artefacts such as business process models. Designing People who produce designs are called ''designers''. The term 'designer' generally refers to someone who wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
User-centered Design
User-centered design (UCD) or user-driven development (UDD) is a framework of process (not restricted to interfaces or technologies) in which usability goals, user characteristics, environment, tasks and workflow of a product, service or process are given extensive attention at each stage of the design process. These tests are conducted with/without actual users during each stage of the process from requirements, pre-production models and post production, completing a circle of proof back to and ensuring that "development proceeds with the user as the center of focus." Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively the first-time users of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. User-centered design is based on the understanding of a user, their demands, priorities and experiences and when used, is known to lead to an increased product usefulness and usability as it delivers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reflective Practice
Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's actions so as to take a critical stance or attitude towards one's own practice and that of one's peers, engaging in a process of continuous adaptation and learning. According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight". A key rationale for reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning; deliberate reflection on experience is essential. Reflective practice can be an important tool in practice-based professional learning settings where people learn from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal learning or knowledge transfer. It may be the most important source of personal professional development and improvement. It is also an important way to bring together theory and practice; through reflection a pe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Theory
Design theory is a subfield of design research concerned with various theoretical approaches towards understanding and delineating design principles, design knowledge, and design practice. History Design theory has been approached and interpreted in many ways, from designers' personal statements of design principles, through constructs of the philosophy of design to a search for a design science. The essay "Ornament and Crime" by Adolf Loos from 1908 is one of the early 'principles' design-theoretical texts. Others include Le Corbusier's ''Vers une architecture'' (1923),Le Corbusier, ''Vers une architecture" (1923) and Victor Papanek's ''Design for the real world'' (1972). In a 'principles' approach to design theory, the De Stijl movement (founded in 1917) promoted a geometrical abstract, "ascetic" form of purism that was limited to functionality. This modernist attitude underpinned the Bauhaus movement (1919 onwards). Principles were drawn up for design that were applica ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contextual Inquiry
Contextual inquiry (CI) is a user-centered design (UCD) research method, part of the contextual design methodology. A contextual inquiry interview is usually structured as an approximately two-hour, one-on-one interaction in which the researcher watches the user in the course of the user's normal activities and discusses those activities with the user. Description Contextual inquiry defines four principles to guide the interaction: * Context—Interviews are conducted in the user's actual workplace. The researcher watches users do their own work tasks and discusses any artifacts they generate or use with them. In addition, the researcher gathers detailed re-tellings of specific past events when they are relevant to the project focus. * Partnership—User and researcher collaborate to understand the user's work. The interview alternates between observing the user as he or she works and discussing what the user did and why. * Interpretation—The researcher shares interpretations a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Action Research
Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor a MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action". Process Action research is an interactive inquiry process that balances problem-solving actions implemented in a collaborative context with data-driven collaborative analysis or research to understand underlying causes enabling future predictions about personal and organizational change. After six d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Semantic Turn
The semantic turn refers to a paradigm shift in the design of artifacts – industrial, graphic, informational, architectural, and social – from an emphasis on how artifacts ought to function to what they mean to those affected by them – semantics being a concern for meaning. It provides a new foundation for professional design, a detailed design discourse, codifications of proven methods, compelling scientific justifications of its products, and a clear identity for professional designers working within a network of their stakeholders. The semantic turn suggests a distinction between the technical and user-irrelevant working of artifacts and the human interactions with artifacts, individually, socially, and culturally. Attending to the technical dimension of artifacts, for example, by applied scientists, mechanical or electronic engineers, and experts in economics, production, and marketing, is called technology-centered design. It addresses its subject matter in terms tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Schön
Donald Alan Schön (September 19, 1930 – September 13, 1997) was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning. Education and career He was born in Boston and brought up in Massachusetts, at Brookline and Worcester.Donald Schon at infed.org accessed July 2007 After doing a Bachelor's at , he completed Master's and doctoral studies in philosophy at . His thesis dealt with [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nigel Cross
Nigel Cross (born 1942) is a British academic, a design researcher and educator, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at The Open University, United Kingdom, where he was responsible for developing the first distance-learning courses in design in the early 1970s. He was an editor of the journal ''Design Studies'' since its inception in 1979 and is now Emeritus Editor in Chief. Cross helped clarify and develop the concept of design thinking (or "designerly ways of knowing") related to the development of design as an academic discipline. He is one of the key people of the Design Research Society. Education Nigel Cross studied architecture at the University of Bath 1961-1966. He then took a MSc course in Industrial Design Technology, run by the leading design methodologist John Christopher Jones, at the University of Manchester Institute of Science of Technology (1967). In 1974 he also completed a PhD at UMIST in computer aided design. Research Nigel Cross began his design researc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Design Issues
''Design Issues'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal covering design history, theory, and criticism. The journal typically includes theoretical and critical articles, book reviews, and illustrations. ''Design Issues'' was established in 1984 and is published online and in hard copy by MIT Press The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962. History The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publ .... Abstracting and indexing The journal is abstracted and indexed in: References External links * Arts journals Engineering journals Publications established in 1984 MIT Press academic journals Quarterly journals English-language journals {{Art-history-journal-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
