DRM, a Design Research Methodology - Tapa dura

Reseña del editor

The initial motivator for the development of DRM, a Design Research Methodology, and the subsequent writing of this book was our frustration about the lack of a common terminology, benchmarked research methods, and above all, a common research methodology in design. A shared view of the goals and framework for doing design research was missing. Design is a multidisciplinary activity occurring in multiple application areas and involving multiple stakeholders. As a consequence, design research emerges in a variety of disciplines for a variety of applications with a variety of subjects. This makes it particularly difficult to review its literature, relate various pieces of work, find common ground, and validate and share results that are so essential for sustained progress in a research community. Above all, design research needs to be successful not only in an academic sense, but also in a practical sense. How could we help the community develop knowledge that is both academically and practically worthwhile? Each of us had our individual ideas of how this situation could be improved. Lucienne Blessing, while finishing her thesis that involved studying and improving the design process, developed valuable insights about the importance and relationship of empirical studies in developing and evaluating these improvements. Amaresh Chakrabarti, while finishing his thesis on developing and evaluating computational tools for improving products, had developed valuable insights about integrating and improving the processes of building and evaluating tools.

Contraportada

Design research is a fast-growing field of inquiry with significant importance in terms of helping society to create products and processes of improved quality and for enhancing the environment in which we live. The step-wise, hands-on approach of DRM studies the ways in which design research can best be undertaken to address specific questions. This study gives rise, for the first time, to a generic and systematic design research methodology intended to improve the quality of design research – its academic credibility, industrial significance and societal contribution – by enabling more thorough, efficient and effective procedures.

Professors Blessing and Chakrabarti provide a comprehensive list of types of design research linked to appropriate research methods – familiar as well as new – and supported by illustrative examples throughout the text. Furthermore, the book points the way to more detailed sources of various established research methods that can be applied. The practical emphasis of the text is reinforced by a whole section of design research project examples contributed by eminent design researchers and placed in the context of the proposed methodology to demonstrate the application of the variety of approaches available in a structured fashion.

DRM, a Design Research Methodology, speaks to a broad readership: it will provide the graduate student with an excellent grounding in good design research practice, inculcating good habits of research for the future and showing how the process of understanding and improving design can become more effective and efficient; it will interest the academic and industrial researcher as a source of useful and well-ordered methods within a common design research ethos, as well as a methodological framework for research projects and programmes; it will attract the supervisors of young researchers by offering research methods and a well-thought-out and logically structured research process for use in courses on design research.