The Impact of Design Research in Other Research Fields

Description

"Design research is increasingly weak in comparison with other fields; without action to increase scientific, theoretical, and methodological rigour there is a real possibility of the field being superseded and becoming obsolete through lack of impact.”

This is an excerpt from “Developing Theory-Driven Design Research,” an article by Philip Cash that appeared in Design Studies (May 2018). We spoke with him about this article and his views on design research, with the goal of initiating a larger discussion about the rigour, relevance and impact in design research. Cash is Associate Professor in Management Engineering at the Technical University of Denmark. Along with his co-authors, he is the recipient of the Design Studies Best Paper Award in 2017 for a previous article.