Not sure exactly what you are asking for here So I may be off target. I think it is now well accepted that designing can in itself be a way of contributing to knowledge. I have written on this subject and you will find the references here. By uttering a design we have changed the world in some way. Designers study other designers works in order to learn new ideas and be stimulated in their own thinking. So I must be in favour of being able to do a PhD in the form of a musical composition, a design or other creative outputs.

However not all designs go beyond the simple solving of a local problem and produce knowledge that has the potential to be generically useful. How one defines this line in principle remains a major problem. It can be done by peer evaluation but this is unreliable. It is more reliably done by the passing of time and many minds examining the work but this is not a satisfactory solution for a degree examination.

Dear Bryan R Lawson ,

Thank you *very much* for your reply. Being aware of the different positions on the meaning of Design research, I expected different accounts of the factors that play against its development, whether internal to the discipline of Design (e.g. are written research, papers, indexed research journals of well established importance to Design schools compared to research by designing? Are the design research results understandable for other disciplines?) or external (such as government funding agencies that apply some form of research assessment that may leave Design education institutions in a low ranking compared to STEM institutions, or research funding/scholarship opportunities available for design, etc.).

When you say "I think it is now well accepted that designing can in itself be a way of contributing to knowledge", does the assessment of government agencies (in the UK, in your case) also consider this (related to PhD programs funding)?

I would love to hear your opinion based on your outstanding experience. What needs to be done for design research - at doctoral level - to be increasingly produced, valorized and disseminated? What factors are eventually making it difficult for academic Design Research to advance in its dissemination or to see its impact assessed?

There are three fundamental questions here: (i) what (manifestation of) design is (or may be) considered at doctoral level, (ii) what design research is (or may be) considered at doctoral level (from epistemological, methodological, and axiological points of view), and (iii) what phenomena of practicing design, doing research, and exploring/synthesizing knowledge are (or may be) proper for rigorous (repeatable) studies at doctoral level. The differences can be nicely articulated by comparing design-orientated and/or design-inclusive M.Sc., PD.Eng. and Ph.D. diploma works/projects. We must not forget about the general objectives of Ph.D. studies. These are about proving the personal competences for doing objective, systematic, unbiased, useful, etc. scientific inquiry, and creating visibility beyond the local environments by releasing new research approaches, results, questions and ideas for public debates. In this framework, design can be the subject, the means, the target, and the context of doing research.

This is a good question and one that is difficult to answer simply. It is however also made more problematic by ambiguous terminology. Having spent my life researching the nature of design I use the term design research to mean just that. If you want to describe a process that further develops knowledge and understanding using the technique of designing then it would be helpful to call this research Through design or research by design.

if one wants to investigate the potential for this to be presentable for a doctoral degree then I think it is not the government or central bodies who can help us. Firstly the university Itself must explicitly agree to such a category of submission. My university, partly through my persuasion has done so. It also agreed to allow a composition as a form of submission in music. These seem to me to be valid notions. They recognise that one can advance one’s field significantly by either designing or composing. However the problem of assessment remains extraordinarily difficult to proscribe in any generic fashion.

Dear Imre Horvath,

Thank you for your reply! If we can start from the fact that there are a certain number of doctoral programs in Design (PhD or DDes) and a *few* indexed journals, what factors - as I said before - are making it difficult for academic research in Design to advance in its dissemination or to assess its impact (or even to be produced!)? I would very much like to know your experience and point of view on these matters.

Dear Bryan R Lawson,

These are very interesting insights about your position on the production and assessment of Design research. What about the dissemination of academic research? Bearing in mind that for other disciplines there are more established dissemination channels (perhaps also forms of assessment, e.g. papers for Applied Sciences, exhibitions for the Arts, etc.), has the kind of Design research you are advocating found a more suitable or 'designerly' form of dissemination (in your university's experience), one that remains in time and allows its valorization?

Dear Dr. Murillo,

You asked the question: …”what factors are making it difficult for academic research in Design to advance” ( in its dissemination or to assess its impact (or even to be produced!)?)” I think we must go back to the roots if we really want to find ‘the factors’.

Organized purposeful inquiries in design, including PhD studies and other types of project-based research, concurrently build the body of knowledge, establish the discipline/art of design and forward towards its science. The connection of science and design has been formulated two alternative ways. In one formulation it is “design science”, which strives after the systematic principles and processes of designing artifacts (Fuller, Simon, etc.). The other formulation is “science of design”, which involves rigorous investigations of and theorizing about the phenomenon of design (and many associated phenomena (involving products, knowledge, users, processes, enablers, stakeholders, business, technologies, and so forth) (Cross, Andreassen, etc.). By the way, according to me, ‘the knowledge of systematic designing’ and ‘the knowledge of study of designing’ are inseparable. I tried to show it in my paper in 2004. Unfortunately, we have no proper word or phrase for this compound. Having mentioned these, I wonder if these ontological issues are taken into consideration at devising Ph.D. level research programs at universities. (Probably, not everywhere.)

Another issue is that research in design (even a promotion research project) can be approached from multiple various philosophical stances (e.g. objectivist, empiricist, constructivist, instrumentalist, phenomenologist, pragmatist, modernist, anarchist, etc.). These perspectives influence not only the purpose, the specific objectives and hypothesis of research, but also the methodological conduct, the value criteria, the outcome, and the impact of the studies. More often than not, I come across with ‘designerly’ approaches of design knowledge exploration and synthesis (meaning, the results of the research are designed, rather than the reserach model and the conduct).

Furthermore, design research is practically always, but variously, contextualized (i.e. done in various context). Four generic contexts of doing design research can be identified:

• understanding the phenomenon of design in the society (nature, knowledge, methods, values, norms)

• extending our knowledge on the principles of designing (laws, relationships, facts, theories, frameworks)

• supporting creative human activities and processes by proper design methods and tools (models, technologies, devices)

• enhancing problem solving intelligence and competences in specific practical cases (informing, modelling, organizing, validating, etc.).

Obviously, a defendable decision should be made on these, since it is difficult to do research with all these four purposes or contexts in mind. The research schools may have priorities, as well as the Ph.D. researchers. Are these always in harmony?

A next issue is that the traditional (reductionist) approach of science making does not always apply to design research. Some of the phenomena studied by design research are holistic (a kind of multi-disciplinary), rather than reducible. If they are decomposed to sub-phenomena, their essence may be lost. Consequently, they need different (synthetic, rather than analytic) methods. However, these are scarce and underdeveloped. For instance, we do not know enough about data-driven design science.

The inquiry in ‘design’ (whatever it means) is not second to the inquiries in materials, planets, species, particles, or computers). But it is an issue that the ‘science of design’ cannot be supposed to be (and is actually not) fundamental (pure) science. At some places it is formulated as an explicit demand, while the creative and heuristic nature of designing is safeguarded at other places. Many people agrees that the ‘science of design’ should feature foundational (disciplinary) parts for building and empowering the discipline, as well as application-orientated (operative) parts. For this reason, at many universities, design-orientated faculties are put into a category (a box) different than natural sciences and the sciences of engineering (and evaluated according to different criteria). Typical are, for instance, architecture, industrial design engineering, and the like. It is always a question how a foundational part and the operative part can simultaneously be present in a Ph.D. study? There are no universal rules … One thing is important: a short knowledge transfer cycle is supposed to be between the foundational knowledge generation part and the practical knowledge generation/transforming part of design projects.

I think the availability and profile of design journals, the academic forums (conferences and workshops) are just technical issues, which can be managed by the comminity well. The general awareness of the above, and many more things, needs attention. We have to produce comparable results in this unique and ubiquitous field of knowing, doing and making.

Kind regards,

I.H.