From design practice to design science: the evolution of a career in design methodology research

Abstract

This article outlines the author's career in design practice and design research over a period of about 40 years. Throughout this period, research was motivated by the needs of design practice and the intention to create substantial support for it. A development from design practice to design science can be discerned. The 1970s and 1980s were spent as an engineering designer and consultant. An academic career as a university professor starting in 1990 was motivated by the desire to support the design of ‘good’ products in companies with specific methodologies and tools to improve efficiency and effectiveness of design work. Supporting many companies across a broad range of areas, from small-to-medium-sized companies to global players, similarities of methodical support increasingly became obvious and questions concerning the common ground of such company-oriented work arose. At the end of the 1990s, the focus on research work changed more and more towards efforts to find models, methods and knowledge based on common and scientific formula. Superficially, research outcomes in the last decade seem to be more abstract and theoretical, but in fact their applicability was widened substantially because of the reduced number and increasing clarity and simplicity of models and methods. This approach of consolidating design research findings to get a well-founded, but limited number of supporting methods and tools is congruent to the task of designers in practice to create complete product documentation for a given task in a limited time.

Keywords:

• design methods
• techniques and tools
• engineering design in industry
• eco-design
• empirical study
• systematic product development