Engineering

IDE faces an important strategic choice: does the University want the Faculty to
focus on research and impact in a limited number of core areas, or does it want IDE
to stay a bit fuzzy to allow for maximum creativity and personal interests? The
committee believes that the list of research topics is too long and some staff
members share this view. It is essentially a menu from which research staff may
choose topics freely.
The Committee formed the impression that the strategy for the Faculty as a whole
seems to be reconstructed logically from current activities. How research activities
come together in the whole of the three groups is not always clear. The Committee
therefore suggests developing an overall scientific question that can unite the
three programmes with a clear consolidated vision, aims, and objectives. These
should generate synergy among the defined areas.
The Committee learned that peripheral research is already taken out and IDE
stopped some of the research outside the triangle. Also IDE stopped doing research
on every topic of their education. Research is only conducted when pockets of
energy are present. The Committee suggests focussing on areas where there is
existing critical mass, consolidating topics, and/or where there is a demonstrable
international leading position as a way of improving the research development at
IDE. The newly proposed themes (as part of strategy for the coming year) can
clearly serve a role in the marketing of IDE such as on the website and for funding,
but the Committee recommends not to waste faculty time on it.
The Committee learned that the Faculty’s Advisory Board has research strategy as
one of its topics and can be helpful here. The Advisory Board currently has only
one member, who is also working at the University. The Committee suggests to
recruit new members quickly, especially members from outside the University.
It seems the Faculty has a low level of formalisation and relatively few protocols.
The Committee was impressed by the way work is done in an informal way,
without formal procedures. For example, collaboration within research themes
seems to be motivated by individual interest rather than directed by the Faculty.
IDE has international ambitions but there does not seem to be an explicit strategy
in place for diversity.
10 Assessment Committee Report on Research in Industrial Design Engineering 2007-2012