The reality of design research is that it is perpetually challenging the status quo, sometimes in overt ways and sometimes in covert ways. In each instance, the researcher is developing his, her, or a team’s capacity to develop meaningful propositions, processes, and outcomes. It is this character that unites the series of five papers selected for Vol. 21 Issue 2. The range of design research slides from service design to architecture, to organization design, to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and back to service design. There is an unexpected yet natural design research connection between them, that is innovation; it is the aspiration of all. The steps on their quest are presented for us to mindfully learn, enjoy, challenge, and develop.
‘Designing for Value: Insights from the Emotional Appraisal Approach to Understanding User Value’ by Eun Yu contributes to contemporary research, practices, and debates surrounding service design. The paper explores how design might contribute to the value determination process and offers a systematic model of design that moves from Value Propositions to Service Design to Value-in-Use. It argues that an understanding of user resources, user context, and insights into users’ value determination processes are not currently integrated into designers’ processes, which impacts on user expectations. As such, the study investigates how service experiences might trigger evaluative user judgements and what criteria users may employ to evaluate their perceived experiences. A library service at Seoul University, South Korea, is used as the case study.
In ‘Developing a New Method for the Architectural Design Process: An Experimental Study Using Found-Object Art in the Design Studio’, Mehdi KhakZand and Saeid Babaei introduce ‘Found-Object Art’ as a new, flexible tool for architectural design process(es). The paper will be of particular interest to those working in the field of sustainable development and/or with the issue of repurposing waste materials. Developing a catalyst for innovation during the idea-generation phase is the purpose of this paper. The authors explore the place of human creativity and a hands-on process that is due to a perceived lack of innovative tools for architectural design and an over-reliance on digital media. Twentieth-century art movements and artists and the theory of metaphor are referred to, and the experimental study is conducted in design studios across six universities in Tehran, Iran, with 60 graduate-level students.
The next paper chosen for inclusion is Rodrigo Magalhães’s paper ‘Human-Centred Organization Design’. It offers a contribution to design management discourses as it draws on Roberto Verganti’s theory of design-driven innovation and Klaus Krippendorf’s theory of human-centred design to explore a new framework for identity management in organization design. A discussion on the process of organization design change is presented, exploring the role of identity and contending that irrespective of whether organization design happens in a top-down or bottom-up manner, ‘identity’ is a key negotiating issue.
Roderick Walden, Stefan Lie, Berto Pandolfo, Thomas Lee, and Cathy Lockhart present ‘Design Research Units and Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs): An Approach for Advancing Technology and Competitive Strength in Australia’. They bring to the fore a reality (that is not unusual or unknown or limited to a single country), a perpetual and fluid challenge: the high risks and high costs associated with R&D too often deter SMEs from getting involved, and subsequently contributes to negatively compromising levels of innovation and sustainability in their business. Working with design research units in universities offers a way of sharing risk and spreading the costs for SMEs. A case study is offered as a way of facilitating an international discourse (rather than offering solutions) about how to move forward and benefit from a cross-pollination of models, governance, and agency.
The concluding paper in this issue is ‘Servicizing Solutions for Manufacturing Firms: Categorizing Service Ideas from Product-Service Integrated Examples’ by Hokyoung Ryu, Hakyoung Song, Kyougwon Seo, and Jieun Kim. Sitting firmly in the field of service design, this paper offers a contribution to methodology by investigating a new form of value-creation. Four ideas are exposed and empirically verified to practically enable companies to alleviate the complexity for service developments and the co-creation of ideas. It offers a rare discourse about service innovation and how to execute service design in a manufacturing firm.
Closing this issue is a book review by John Knight of Practice-Based Design Research edited by Laurene Vaughan and published by Bloomsbury Academic (2017).
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