Emergence of Design Research and Design Studies

After the 1962 conference, many of the participants began to publish and to define an area of research that focused on design. Three "camps" seemed to emerge to integrate the initial work in Design Methods:

• Behaviorism interpreted Design Methods as a way to describe human behavior in relation to the built environment. Its clinical approach tended to rely on human behavior processes (taxonomic activities).
• Reductivism broke Design Methods down into small constituent parts. This scientific approach tended to rely on rationalism and objectified processes such as epistemological activities.
• Phenomenology approached design methods from an experiential approach (human experience and perception.)

The Design Research Society was founded in 1967 with many participants from the Conference on Design Methods in 1962. The purpose of the Society is to promote "the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields" and is an interdisciplinary group with many professions represented, but all bound by the conviction of the benefits of design research.^[4]

The Environmental Design and Research Association is one of the best-known entities that strive to integrate designers and social science professionals for better built environments. EDRA was founded by Henry Sanoff in 1969. Both John Chris Jones and Christopher Alexander interacted with EDRA and other camps; both seemed at a certain point to reject their interpretations. Jones and Christopher also questioned their original thesis about design methods.

An interesting shift that affected design methods and design studies was the 1968 lecture from Herbert Simon, the Nobel laureate, who presented "The Sciences of the Artificial." He proposed using scientific methods to explore the world of man-made things (hence artificial). He discussed the role of analysis (observation) and synthesis (making) as a process of creating man-made responses to the world he/she interacted with. Important to Simon's contribution were his notions of "bounded rationality" and "satisficing." Simon's concept had a profound impact on the discourse in both design methods, and the newly emerging design studies communities in two ways. It provided an entry of using scientific ideas to overlay on design, and it also created an internal debate whether design could/should be expressed and practiced as a type of science with the reduction of emphasis on intuition.

Nigel Cross has been prolific in articulating the issues of design methods and design research. The discussion of the ongoing debate of what is design research and design science was, and continues to be articulated by Cross. His thesis is that design is not a science, but is an area that is searching for "intellectual independence." He views the original design methods discussions of the 1960s as a way to integrate objective and rational methods in practicing design. Scientific method was borrowed as one framework, and the term "design science" was coined in 1966 at the Second Conference on the Design Method focusing on a systematic approach to practicing design. Cross defined the "science of design" as a way to create a body of work to improve the understanding of design methods—and more importantly that design methods does not need to be a binary choice between science and art.

Nigan Bayazit, professor at the Istanbul Technical University, published an overview of the history of design methods. She stated that "Design methods people were looking at rational methods of incorporating scientific techniques and knowledge into the design process to make rational decisions to adapt to the prevailing values, something that was not always easy to achieve." ^[5] The following is what design research is concerned with:

• The physical embodiment of man-made things, how these things perform their jobs, and how they work
• Construction as a human activity, how designers work, how they think, and how they carry out design activity
• What is achieved at the end of a purposeful design activity, how an artificial thing appears, and what it means
• Embodiment of configurations
• Systematic search and acquisition of knowledge related to design and design activity