Design Theory Under Debate

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Once a year, all the researchers associated with the Danish Centre for Design Research meet to debate fundamental issues related to design research. This year’s theme was the nature of design theory – and, not least, what theory means for a practice field such as design. In addition to the debate among the Danish researchers, the research rally also involved Professor Richard Buchanan from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and Associate Professor Daniel Fällman from Umeå University, Sweden.

By Mads Nygaard Folkmann

The annually recurring research rallies offer a unique opportunity for Danish design researchers associated with the Danish Centre for Design Research (DCDR) to meet and exchange experiences across the four institutions that make up the DCDR. The research rallies help consolidate and develop the Danish design research environment. At the same time, the research rallies offer an opportunity to set an agenda for the field and to invite prominent profiles from outside Denmark and ask them to contribute to the debate.

Design and Theory

At the research rally it was debated what design theory actually is, and not least what its function is: What is its contribution to education and research? As a scientific field and a research area, the design discipline is relatively young and hence does not have the same taken-for-granted relationship to various fundamental concepts that most older academic disciplines have.

At the same time, as a field it springs from a concrete design practice, which poses a special set of challenges in relation to research. Richard Buchanan is a professor at Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio; he has also acted as a design advisor and as editor of the periodical Design Issues for many years. He pointed to the unique property of design of reflecting a process where the design solution is not given beforehand but only emerges during the design process. “The challenge within Design Science is therefore that we have to find our subject matter,” he said.

In his presentation at the DCDR research rally, Professor Richard Buchanan laid out the importance of using design theory to highlight the conceptual framework applied in one's design work. A keen awareness of this framework offers new perspectives on the problems that one is attempting to solve in a concrete design process. Foto: Henrik Petit.

The Productive Paradox

Richard Buchanan’s approach to the issue of design theory was to offer a theory of theory. His ambition was not to point to one or more theories as particularly appropriate but instead to examine what a theory is, and what it is good for. He pointed out that theory can be used as a framework for interpreting and understanding design. “As I see it, design theory can be used to find explanations for design, to inform an inquiry of how and why things in design are as they are. With theory we can extract the significance as well as the connections of things and make them explicit,” Richard Buchanan explained.

Thus, to Richard Buchanan, the challenge for design theory and design research is to ask the right questions. And here it is important to shift one’s focus from the individual design solution to the framework within which the questions to the design solutions are posed. As Richard Buchanan sees it, this requires a particular analytical and interpretive effort, which he also applies in his teaching.
“At the heart of design research lies the paradox,” he said. “Design research can be considered as an inquiry in search of the paradox. The paradox is an apparent contradiction that points to an unsolved question. This question requires interpretation, and it is out of the interpretive act that the subject matter for design arises.”

This is an insight that Richard Buchanan has applied in his work as a researcher, a teacher and an advisor in relation to complex design solutions. For example, he has worked with the Australian tax system, where the goal was to convert a system into something that people could experience in a concrete sense. That required a frame of understanding that is not only aimed at the specific solution but which also considers the conditions that determine the solution.
“When we for instance need to design a certain service, we should not only focus on the singular service, but on what the consequences of different meanings of ‘service’ are. By investigating paradoxes we melt down static conceptions in our understanding,” he explained.

Design Ethics

In this context, he also addressed the ethical aspect as a design activity. He pointed out that design both enables and structures human relations and behaviour.
“With design we can take care of people. In enabling human action and social interaction, design can support human dignity. All design solutions consist of making some actions possible while at the same time constraining others,” he said. Here too, he emphasised the strength in practising an inquisitive approach rather than determining particular mindsets.
“I teach my students how to talk about this, not what to think,” he explained.

Daniel Fällman's presentation emphasised the essential role of design theory. His key point was that design consists of multiple interactive components that should, ideally, all be present at the same time: purposeful design praxis, experimental and explorative design, and a reflective-analytical understanding of the design process. Photo: Henrik Petit.

Three Design Components

Daniel Fällman, an associate professor and studio director at the Interactive Institute, Umeå University, Sweden, offered his view of the capacity of design theory to address actual design problems. He said that the design field can be divided into three sections: design practice, explorative design and design studies. Design practice deals with concrete and actual design as expressed in products. Explorative design is about the ‘possible’ within design, in a cultural and idealistic perspective. Design studies are about reflective and analytical efforts to explain and understand the design process.

Daniel Fällman pointed to the internal connectedness of the three areas a means of understanding the role of theory in design.
“It is a challenge to determine how we can include explorative design and design studies into practical design,” he said. “But with this model, it is possible to differentiate and illustrate various characteristics or dimensions within a design project. That provides a common notation for what is going on in a project, and it can also be used to plot new projects – determining where one wants the centre of gravity in a project.”

At the Interactive Institute in Umeå, the model plays a major role both for researchers and in relation to students.
“The model has made us talk, it has challenged preconceptions and stimulated discussions,” said Daniel Fällman. “It is not to be seen as a framework model that can and shall comprehend everything but as a working model as part of a process. It can – so to speak – trick people into theory to let them see and use the theory that is always inherent in design. With the model, the theory gets connected to practice, the theory becomes practical,” he said.