Research at Design Schools Bears Fruit

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Design research at The Danish Design School and the Kolding School of Design has received a positive evaluation as part of an extensive evaluation of design research in Denmark. The two schools have pursued different strategies and have both achieved good results in a brief amount of time. However, in the assessment of the international evaluation panel, there are still challenges and room for improvement.

By Anna Krarup Jensen

In June 2010, two reports were published presenting the findings of an international panel that evaluated the research at the Kolding School of Design and The Danish Design School. Both schools received a positive evaluation of their research efforts.
“These positive evaluations are a recognition of the international standard of the design research environment in Denmark,” says Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, rector of the Kolding School of Design.

Results that Normally Take 25 Years to Achieve

Indeed, the two schools of design have plenty of reason to be proud. Their efforts to establish research environments have borne fruit.

In their report, the panel concludes the following about the Kolding School of Design:
“With good reason the level can be seen to meet international standards of design research conducted at institutions of design education worldwide.”
Thus, the panel finds “the achievements of the school, in terms of its research results and its establishment of a design research activity and environment, very good, with excellence in certain areas – particularly in view of the short history of the research at the school and the small volume of the activity.”

The panel says the following about The Danish Design School:
“The achievements in the evaluation period, in terms of development of the research activity, are particularly admirable in light of the history of the school and its development of a research activity. The rather small school has had relatively few research finances and a very few years for trying to achieve something that usually takes a quarter of a century.”

“We have an active focus: Our research should be more practice-oriented, for example aimed at research into the design process or materials. This emphasis is already there, but there is room for improvement,” says Rector Anne-Louise Sommer, the Danish Design School.

Two Different Strategies

The reports clearly show that the two schools have followed different strategies from the outset. The Danish Design School first recruited researchers from other universities, for example from the humanities and technical sciences. By contrast, the Kolding School of Design set out to give designers research training. Both strategies have demonstrated their strengths.
“It makes sense that the two design schools in Denmark would have different profiles in their research, as we do in the area of education,” says Anne-Louise Sommer, rector of The Danish Design School.

Methodological Facilitators

The strategy applied by The Danish Design School enabled the school to establish an active research environment very quickly.
“If you take experienced researchers who are used to working in a university, there is no debate that what they do is research. It is! This quickly produces research results that are not cast in doubt,” Anne-Louise Sommer explains.
In the evaluation report, the first researchers at The Danish Design School are referred to as methodological facilitators. They had no experience with design research, which is a relatively recent research discipline, but they were trained in the “art of research” and were able to pass this skill on to the next group of researchers, some of whom were trained designers.

“We have had to find our own identity as a research institution,” says Rector Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen, the Kolding School of Design. “It’s only natural that the researchers didn’t set out to develop their own methods from scratch but instead adopted other scientific methods.”

Evolution, Not Revolution

By contrast, research was a new activity that the first associate professors and Ph.D. scholars at the Kolding School of Design first had to master. Their background typically lay within the field of design.
“The issues that we encountered in the workshops or in collaborating with companies formed the basis for the school’s research projects and Ph.D. dissertations,” Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen explains.
Although this process was long and tough, she still thinks that giving the school’s own staff research training was the right choice. It helped create a cohesive environment in the school.
“We avoided culture clashes,” she says. “Establishing a research environment in the school was an evolutionary process, not a revolution.”

Unique Research Profiles

In the reports, the evaluation panel points to the relatively limited size of the schools and the research environments as one of the challenges facing both the Kolding School of Design and The Danish Design School.
Danish design research has a relatively short history, and there are as yet few senior researchers in the environment. It was only in 2003 that the two design schools were able to offer research-based education.
Thus, although the current research in the institutions receive praise, the panel emphasises that the schools need to focus more on developing their own research profiles in order to mature their research environments.

More Practice-Based Research

In relation to The Danish Design School, the evaluation panel calls for a stronger focus on practice-based research, among other recommendations. They point to the ongoing development in the school toward a greater emphasis on research that is anchored in the design discipline itself. Rector Anne-Louise Sommer confirms this observation.
“We have an active focus: Our research should be more practice-oriented, for example aimed at research into the design process or materials. This emphasis is already there, but there is room for improvement. In the education programme, we are currently seeking to incorporate theory and method studies into the project activities. That requires teachers who have a foot in both camps,” she says.
Anne-Louise Sommer points out that this is not just a matter of focus and research strategy. It also takes funding.
“This is a young research environment, it is still under construction. As such, it is a vulnerable and not yet firmly consolidated environment. The challenge is to continue the consolidation process. But in addition to our relatively limited basic funding, the funds are allocated on a project basis. We may receive funding for a 3-year-long Ph.D. contract, but once it expires, we need to apply for funds all over again. Thus, the funding structure is a threat to the continuity,” Anne-Louise Sommer explains.

Research Through Design

In the Kolding School of Design the evaluation panel calls for more research through design, that is, research that uses the design process and design methods in its studies.
“We have had to find our own identity as a research institution,” says Elsebeth Gerner Nielsen. “It’s only natural that the researchers didn’t set out to develop their own methods from scratch but instead adopted other scientific methods.”
In recent years, the Kolding School of Design has focused more on what they call development-driven research, where design development or artistic development is linked with research. In many cases, development-driven research is directly applicable both in education and in business collaboration. This trend meets with approval from the evaluation panel. The report says,
“The moving of design research towards a more explorative, even experimental mode does not mean loss of transparency or solidity of argumentation, but it certainly enables researchers who are educated in design to more fully exploit their knowledge capacity. In addition, the gained results find more audience within design practice and education than more theoretically based research results do.”

The minister is pleased

These two evaluation reports are the first in a series of five. In autumn 2010, the evaluation reports on research at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture and at the Aarhus School of Architecture will be published along with a report on the overall design research environment under the Danish Ministry of Culture and the collaborative efforts in the Danish Centre for Design Research. Within the Ministry of Culture, there is great satisfaction with the positive assessment of Danish design research in the first two reports.
“I am very pleased that the evaluation of the research at the two institutions is so unequivocally positive. It is gratifying to see that Denmark now has two design research institutions that measure up in an international context,” says the Danish Minister of Culture Per Stig Møller (in a press release in connection with the release of the evaluation reports.)