In July 2008, the Design Research Society hosted the conference Undisciplined! Here, one of the key topics was the interdisciplinary nature of design research. The unique designerly approach that other disciplines too might benefit from was also highlighted and debated.

By Hans Emborg Bünemann

Many of the discussions at the Design Research Society’s conference Undisciplined! revolved around the particular challenges facing any interdisciplinary research discipline, including design research. As an independent research discipline it is relatively new. It draws on and combines theory and research methods from many different disciplines. Whereas, to some extent, the choice of both theory and method is obvious in research projects within established fields with a long research tradition, design researchers are continually required to motivate their choices.

The logo for the Design Research Society’s conference in Sheffield, an ‘undisciplined’ bar code, reflected the conference title, Undisciplined! Many of the presentations at the conference explored the interdisciplinary quality of design research and the properties of a unique “design approach”.

The transformation of non-designers into designers
The task of training people from other professions or disciplines to be designers reveals deep insights about the nature of the design process and makes it possible to define what characterises a designerly approach.
This is an experience that Martin Siegel and Erik Stolterman, both professors at the School of Informatics, Indiana University in the USA, have made as teachers in the university’s master’s programme in interaction design. At the conference in Sheffield in July 2008 they shared their insights with their research colleagues in a presentation by Martin Siegel entitled Metamorphosis: Transforming Non-designers into Designers.

Indiana University’s two-year master’s programme in interaction design is open to students who have completed a bachelor’s degree in social sciences (e.g. psychology, journalism and anthropology), sciences (e.g. biology, geology) or technology (e.g. computer science and informatics). In the process of turning so-called non-designers into designers, Martin Siegel and Erik Stolterman have identified a number of intellectual, practical, psychological and social barriers that make it difficult for the students to complete this transformation process and acquire a design perspective.

The design research conference Undisciplined! was held at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK. At the university, the design discipline dates back to 1843, when Sheffield School of Design was founded. Photo: Hans Emborg Bünemann

Design approach
For example, non-designers tend to stick to the notion that there is one best solution. By contrast, experienced designers believe there are multiple possible solutions, and that one needs to clarify the criteria and arguments in favour of a given solution. While non-designers defend their own design ideas, experienced designers look to their team for inspiration and solutions.

With regard to insight into user needs, non-designers put a low priority on user research, as they believe that they know what the users want. Experienced designers, on the other hand, make no assumptions about the users’ desires but study them instead.

As far as the practical work is concerned, according to Martin Siegel and Erik Stolterman, experienced designers sketch continuously and derive inspiration from all contexts, while non-designers sketch for particular projects.
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During the conference, the academic publishing house Taylor & Francis hosted a reception where a selection of their books and other publications about design and design research were available for browsing. Among other titles, Taylor & Francis publishes the international design research journal of the Danish Centre for Design Research, Artifact. Photo: Hans Emborg Bünemann

Undisciplined!
Martin Siegel’s and Erik Stolterman’s approach is based on the assumption that design as an generic discipline consists of a set of skills that can be applied to or combined with approaches of other disciplines. Issues concerning the design discipline and interdisciplinary qualities were addressed under one of the main headings of the conference: Disciplines and Disciplinarity.

This was a key topic at the conference, which had Undisciplined! as its overall title. The conditions of the design discipline change, new types of design arise across traditional disciplinary boundaries, and professions that were previously unrelated to design begin to design. Filippo Salustri and Damian Rogers from Ryerson University in Canada contributed to this topic with a presentation entitled Some Thoughts on Terminology and Discipline in Design. Here, Filippo Salustri noted that the design approach arose simultaneously within several disciplines: science, engineering, architecture and art. He argued for the need to notice when one is or wants to be undisciplined and stated that this in itself requires discipline!

Well-organised conference 
The conference, which took place at Sheffield Hallam University under Professor Chris Rust’s excellent leadership, was held in a relaxed atmosphere but still maintained a serious professional air. The conference offered a wide range of presentations divided between five parallel tracks, each on a main theme. Design researchers from all over the world had submitted a total of 400 abstracts for conference papers. Two thirds of the submitted papers were rejected in the academic selection procedure, which was handled by an international Peer Review Panel numbering 160 experienced researchers. Participants could browse the content of the 140 accepted full papers in a Book of Abstracts that was handed out at the start of the conference.

Additional information:
Conference web site

Siegel, Martin A. and Stolterman, Erik. Metamorphosis: Transforming Non-designers into Designers. 2008.

Salustri, Filippo A. and Rogers, Damian. Some Thoughts on Terminology and Discipline in Design. 2008.

Design Research Society’s conferences Design Research Society (DRS) is an association for design researchers under the auspices of the International Association of Societies of Design Research (IASDR). The conference Undisciplined!, which took place in July 2008 in Sheffield, is the latest in the series of DRS conferences for design researchers: 2002: Commonground, Brunel University, Windsor, UK 2004: Futureground, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia 2006: Wonderground, Instituto de Artes Visuais, Design e Marketing, Lisbon, Portugal 2008: Undisciplined!, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, UK The next DRS conference will be held in 2010 in Montréal, Canada.

Mind Design #11, 2008