15 questions about design (and) research

Talking about design research is no easy task, but integrating design and research in practice is a far more difficult endeavor. Those of us who perform both activities face the challenge of combining two modes of thinking that may at first seem incompatible: design relies on inventive, non-linear, and intuitive processes, whereas research operates on the basis of rigorous, systematic, and explicable criteria. Rather than describing the multitude of relationships that can exist between designing and researching, this presentation interrogates the fundamentals of such relationships. To that end, I formulate fifteen questions and organize them around three overarching themes: (1) practice and process, (2) object and artifact, and (3) method and knowledge. The presentation targets designer-researchers and graduate students grappling with the challenge of accommodating their practice within current scientific and academic design discourses.