Website: Revista Diseña
Deadline for submissions: 28 February 2018
Guest Editors: Stan Ruecker and Marci Uihlein, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Design contributes to interdisciplinary research in three ways:
Matters of concern are topics that are not the central research area for any given discipline, but instead require contributions from many disciplines. Erling Björgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren, of the Malmö Living Labs, talk about “matters of concern” in the context of their work as being served by Things (“Socio-material assemblies”), as opposed to the usual “things” of products and services.
The field of Public Health in the United States is another such example, pulling in those who work on medical issues as well as public policy into a larger interdisciplinary group. However, research into most matters of concern is led by a specific field that has a natural affinity or closest affiliation for the subject matter, so projects dealing with smart grids, for instance, tend to be led by people from electrical engineering, even though the social or political aspects may be as challenging as the technical ones. For that reason, electrical engineers working with smart grids will often include social scientists and designers on the research team.
With this issue we ask a series of questions in order to ask researcher to more precisely articulate and describe design-led research: What are examples of design-led research projects addressing matters of concern, what are the defining traits of such projects, and what has design brought that other disciplines could not? What legitimates the designer as a leader? What authority, expertise, or qualifications must a designer possess to lead? What does design contribute to research projects—a specific ability to form knowledge or an ability to assemble discrete pieces into a unified whole? What are the design methods or strategies used in research? And, are these methods succinctly defined at the commencing of a project or developed as the research unfolds?
Inherent in this examination is the desire to identify and recognize what design brings to research. Designers are trained to address multi-parametric tasks, with testing, evaluating, and redefining the design “problem” through every stage of the process whether designing a library or silverware. Designers are necessarily interdisciplinary. To get something into the physical form, designers may work with a range of specialists (digital, electrical, material), and then partner with manufacturing or construction teams. The tools designers use include sketching, and modeling (virtual and physical) alongside text-based, visual, and haptic analysis. With these qualities, the discipline of design brings unique approaches to research and to pressing societal needs.
This special issue of Diseña invites authors to contribute papers where the research into a matter of concern has been led by designers. In some cases, this may be because there are projects whose subject matter has a natural affinity for design. In other cases, it may be that the subject is one that no other discipline wishes to tackle, so design becomes the de facto leader.
The other disciplines involved can range widely. For example, we are interested in papers dealing with one or more of the following topic: Industry, Organizational Design, Social Good, Urban Design, Urban Hacking and Urban Prototypes, Smart Cities, Water, Electricity, Ecology Design, Public services as public space, Public Interest Design, Scale, New Materials, Speculative/critical/provocative prototyping, Design for disassembly, Infrastructuring, Fashion, Food, Political design or design for political action, and Visualization.
If interested, please submit your manuscript via the website by February 28, 2018. Revisions and modifications after the peer-review process need to occur during April 2018, as the issue will come out in July 2018.
Only contributions in English will be accepted. The length of the manuscripts will be from 3,500 to 4,000 words. All manuscripts should include figures and images illustrating the argument. Captions are mandatory.
Authors must also provide an abstract (140 words max.) and five keywords, as well as a short 150-word bio. Citations and list of references must follow APA style. Please, see instructions for authors in attached document.
Deadline for submissions: 28 February 2018
Design contributes to interdisciplinary research in three ways:
- in the aid of a project within another discipline (e.g. design for healthcare)
- contributing to a matter of concern (e.g. Latour 2004) that crosses disciplines, but as a substantive research partner in a project led by another discipline (e.g. design for smart grids)
- in a leadership role on a project that crosses disciplines, and addresses a matter of concern (e.g. design of mediating artifacts).
Matters of concern are topics that are not the central research area for any given discipline, but instead require contributions from many disciplines. Erling Björgvinsson, Pelle Ehn, and Per-Anders Hillgren, of the Malmö Living Labs, talk about “matters of concern” in the context of their work as being served by Things (“Socio-material assemblies”), as opposed to the usual “things” of products and services.
The field of Public Health in the United States is another such example, pulling in those who work on medical issues as well as public policy into a larger interdisciplinary group. However, research into most matters of concern is led by a specific field that has a natural affinity or closest affiliation for the subject matter, so projects dealing with smart grids, for instance, tend to be led by people from electrical engineering, even though the social or political aspects may be as challenging as the technical ones. For that reason, electrical engineers working with smart grids will often include social scientists and designers on the research team.
With this issue we ask a series of questions in order to ask researcher to more precisely articulate and describe design-led research: What are examples of design-led research projects addressing matters of concern, what are the defining traits of such projects, and what has design brought that other disciplines could not? What legitimates the designer as a leader? What authority, expertise, or qualifications must a designer possess to lead? What does design contribute to research projects—a specific ability to form knowledge or an ability to assemble discrete pieces into a unified whole? What are the design methods or strategies used in research? And, are these methods succinctly defined at the commencing of a project or developed as the research unfolds?
Inherent in this examination is the desire to identify and recognize what design brings to research. Designers are trained to address multi-parametric tasks, with testing, evaluating, and redefining the design “problem” through every stage of the process whether designing a library or silverware. Designers are necessarily interdisciplinary. To get something into the physical form, designers may work with a range of specialists (digital, electrical, material), and then partner with manufacturing or construction teams. The tools designers use include sketching, and modeling (virtual and physical) alongside text-based, visual, and haptic analysis. With these qualities, the discipline of design brings unique approaches to research and to pressing societal needs.
This special issue of Diseña invites authors to contribute papers where the research into a matter of concern has been led by designers. In some cases, this may be because there are projects whose subject matter has a natural affinity for design. In other cases, it may be that the subject is one that no other discipline wishes to tackle, so design becomes the de facto leader.
The other disciplines involved can range widely. For example, we are interested in papers dealing with one or more of the following topic: Industry, Organizational Design, Social Good, Urban Design, Urban Hacking and Urban Prototypes, Smart Cities, Water, Electricity, Ecology Design, Public services as public space, Public Interest Design, Scale, New Materials, Speculative/critical/provocative prototyping, Design for disassembly, Infrastructuring, Fashion, Food, Political design or design for political action, and Visualization.
If interested, please submit your manuscript via the website by February 28, 2018. Revisions and modifications after the peer-review process need to occur during April 2018, as the issue will come out in July 2018.
Only contributions in English will be accepted. The length of the manuscripts will be from 3,500 to 4,000 words. All manuscripts should include figures and images illustrating the argument. Captions are mandatory.
Authors must also provide an abstract (140 words max.) and five keywords, as well as a short 150-word bio. Citations and list of references must follow APA style. Please, see instructions for authors in attached document.
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