American Design Researcher: Danish Design Research has Great Potential

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Denmark has a strong design culture that can be expanded to new arenas in Denmark and abroad, says one of the world’s leading design researchers, Professor Richard Buchanan from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. As he sees it, Denmark has a great potential for developing a successful design research community, ensuring design research a central position in the development of society. But this requires broad collaboration across schools, institutions and companies – and the building blocks for this collaboration are already evident, Richard Buchanan says.

By Irene Houstrup

In late August this year, the American design researcher Professor Richard Buchanan visited Denmark to speak about design theory at Danish Centre for Design Research’s annual research rally and to take a closer look at developments within design and design research in Denmark. He has been studying the development in Denmark for some time, and according to him it is remarkable.

In Richard Buchanan's assessment, there is critical mass for a successful Danish design research community with just enough diversity to make the future a lively prospect of new thinking.  Photo: Henrik Petit.

Constructive Dialogue in Danish Design Research

“Denmark has one of the strongest design cultures that I have seen. From graphics to artefacts, and from artefacts to the quality of service and organisation, design seems to have a pervasive influence or presence,” says Richard Buchanan. According to him, there seems to be a seamless transition from one order of design to another. He speaks of the 4 Orders of Design that have unfolded in the twentieth century and which are now expanding in the twenty-first century, beginning with graphics and communication design and continuing into industrial design, then into interactions and services and then into organisation design. He continues, “perhaps many Danes take this for granted, but I do not take it for granted. I wish that other countries had the same sensibility and appreciation for a well-designed environment.” 

Richard Buchanan believes that the development in the field of design is partly due to an emerging design research culture and partly due to a re-emergence of excellent design thinking and practice. “This has been confirmed for me through the very interesting relationship of the various schools of design and the Danish Centre for Design Research, among others,” he says.

Denmark has the capacity to build a powerful design research environment

In the Danish design research environment he notes a constructive dialogue and a diversity that he believes facilitates additional studies and research, and which bolsters the role of design in Danish culture.
“A visitor from abroad quickly sees that there is critical mass for a successful design research community with just enough diversity to make the future a lively prospect of new thinking. The tradition of design in Denmark is so strong that it must give energy to expand the influence of Danish design thinking into new arenas in Denmark and abroad,” he says.

Richard Buchanan believes that Denmark has an unusual opportunity to develop a coherent program of organised design research for the future of the field and its place in national life, both economic and social.

Design Research is Essential for Society

According to Richard Buchanan, research plays a valuable role today in helping students and practising designers understand the new directions in which design must move if it is to provide a competitive edge for companies and, indeed, for countries.

The significance of design lies not only in the products and services that may be created in the future but also, and maybe primarily, in a deeper cultivation of citizens to live and work well in our world.
“To me, research may advance professional practice in design. And it may advance a more sophisticated understanding of design around us everywhere,” Richard Buchanan says.
“Design is now the intellectual property of nations – not just corporations – and that property must be cultivated and expanded if it is to remain vital. One very clear example is the role of research in supporting the development of human services, whether through companies, or government, or non-governmental organisations. The area of service design has grown rapidly in the past three years, and work in this area simply must be supported by research”, he says. According to him, the idea of “service” is rather narrow in common understanding, but it is a wide-reaching concept that requires imagination and research to elaborate in design work.

Denmark has the potential to create a successful structure for design research. It is crucial, however, for design research to build bridges to other research fields and, not least, to the business sector, says Richard Buchanan, who already sees the contours of such a broad collaboration in Denmark.  Photo: Henrik Petit.

Denmark is a Leader in Organisation Design

And beyond service, there is the area of design that Richard Buchanan calls 4th Order design – the design of environments, systems, and organisations. This area is emerging, too, in Denmark. At the moment, according to Richard Buchanan, Denmark may be one of the leading players in exploring 4th Order design.
“I have seen this in various places during my visit. For example, there are at least two design firms in Copenhagen that are pursuing what they sometimes call service design but that includes a serious concern for ‘strategic conversations’ and the shaping of vision within organizations. I could also refer to some of the doctoral research projects that I have seen in different schools of architecture and design” he says, and continues: “It is marked often by a closer relationship between schools of business and schools of design. I have seen signs of very exciting interactions and initiatives in research and in education that point toward a very productive future. Indeed, Denmark is only one of several countries where a new form of managing by design is emerging. But from what I have seen, Denmark is at a leading edge of this movement.”

Building Bridges

One of the most important trends that Richard Buchanan has observed over the past eight or ten years — perhaps even longer — is the growing interest in design in academic fields that are often perceived as otherwise far removed from what we commonly think of as design.
“There are at least ten other fields or discourse communities that are taking up the topic of design and exploring it in conferences and journals. Examples include the information systems community, which will hold a European conference on design this coming spring, and the field of communication studies, which includes journalism and public media. There are many others, all quite interesting and all beginning to think seriously about design in the context of their work,” he says.

“Ironically, such work seldom makes proper reference to the work that has already taken place in the design research community. In fact, many of the debates and subjects of such conferences are a reinvention of ideas that are already well-established in the design community,” he explains, and continues, “but it is important to recognise that many of these fields are comprised of far more researchers than we find in the design research community as we have known it. And the new researchers are able to bring important ideas and methods into new engagement with design. It is essential that we build bridges to those other disciplines. We must work to collaborate with our colleagues in other disciplines. This is a form of leveraging that gives advantage to everyone — a ‘win-win’ solution.”

Richard Buchanan emphasises that researchers from all the different areas that deal with design research should stand on each other’s shoulders, pulling together. And he already sees signs of such collaboration in the Danish design research community. For example, links to business and management have an unusual new vitality that differs from the relationship of design and business ten or fifteen years ago.

“This is an exciting time for design — if we are wise enough to build new partnerships,” Richard Buchanan says.