Designwissenschaft und Designforschung: Ein einführender Überblick

Issues � Designforschung � Felder von Designforschung
• Design axiology: The study of worth in the Design
area, with special regard to the relations between
technical, economic, moral, social and esthetic
values.
• Design philosophy: The study of the logic of discourse
on matters of concern in the Design area.
• Design epistemology: The study of the nature and
validity of ways of knowing, believing and feeling in
the Design area.
• Design pedagogy: The study of the principles and
practice of education in the matter of concern to
the Design area.»
(Archer, 1981, p. 33)
«Whilst Design Reserach can, and does enjoy the
unifying characteristic of being ‹systematic enquiry
whose goal is knowledge of, or in the area of human
experience, skill and understanding that reflects man’s
concern with the enhancement of order, utility, value
and meaning in his habitat›, it is nevertheless even less
reasonable to regard it as a single discipline than it is
to regard scientific enquiry or literary scholarship as a
single discipline. The sub-disciplines which go to make
it up will no doubt continue to expand, divide and reform
over time, in the way that science and scholarship
have expanded, divided and reformed.
If one takes the lexicographer’s approach, and records
the meaning of the term «Design Research» on the basis
of present usage, it is clear that there are already three
or more basic usages established in the centers where
most of the work is going on, and innumerable biases
in the ways in which their bibliographies are put together.
In my view it is high time that these usages and
biases were recognised, and that some of the emergent
constituent sub-disciplines were consolidated by the
identification of their respective bodies of knowledge.
I would personally favour the recognition of three such
sub-disciplines:
1. Design Phenomenology, in which I would include,
for the time being, design history, taxonomy and
technology (…);
2. Design Praxiology, in which I would include design
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modeling and metrology, and
3. Design Philosophy, in which I would include design
axiology, epistemology and pedagogy.
There are overlaps between these sub-disciplines,
of course. All of them, however, although at present
unevenly dependent upon external disciplines, are
capable of expression as coherent bodies of knowledge
with credible boundaries and specific fields of application.
At a time when more and more bibliographies are
being converted into computer-housed databases with
unlikely titles, and when more and more academic and
professional literature searches are becoming restricted
to them, the establishment of recognisable markers for
the centres of interest in Design Reserach is a matter of
some importance.»
(Archer, 1981, p. 35)
Ad 2:
Bruce Archer re-visited:
Nigel Cross (1999)
Nigel Cross, Professor für Design Studies an der Open
University in London, ist seit den Sechziger Jahren in
Designforschung involviert. Für Cross ist Designforschung
die Entwicklung, Artikulation und Kommunikation von
Designwissen und er bezieht sich dabei explizit auf Archer’s
generelle Definition von Forschung. (� Einführung in die
Designforschung)
«At the Design : Science : Method conference of the
Design Research Conference in 1980, Bruce Archer
gave a general definition of research, which is that
«Research is systematic inquiry, the goal of which is
knowledge». Our concern in design research has to be
the development, articulation and communication
of design knowledge. Our axiom has to be that there
are forms of knowledge peculiar to the awareness
and ability of a designer, just as the other intellectual
cultures in the sciences and the arts concentrate on the
forms of knowledge peculiar to the scientist or
the artist.»
(Cross, 1999, p. 5)