DRS2012 Bangkok Proceedings Vol 4 - Design Research Society

CONCLUSIONS
Affective Responses toward Personalized Blog Interfaces Design
There is growing interest in the quality and volume of design research in leading journals
as the influence and contribution of design as a discipline internationally has grown in
significance. Studies have sought to identify perceptions and determinants of quality
across the design research community (see Friedman et al., 2008, Gerda et al., 2011),
core themes in design research through conference contributions (Roworth-Stokes, 2011)
and analysis of citations of papers in the journal Design Studies (Chai and Xiao, 2012).
This paper has presented a systematic audit of design case studies in leading design
research journals with a detailed analysis of the type, subject and field of research
identified within the leading journal Design Studies since 1979.
The findings suggest there are significant variations in both subject coverage and
theoretical issues covered. This raises issues for design case studies in an educational
context. For example the volume of case studies (roughly 8.5% of the total articles
reviewed) relative to discipline in areas such as Fashion and Graphic Design (0 and 3
reported respectively out of 121) does not represent the undergraduate population
(largest out of all creative arts subjects). Further research should be undertaken to
categorise design case studies within the other three leading journals but these results
imply that Breslin and Buchanan’s (2008) call for case studies to bridge the gap between
the development of theory and practice in design education may still be work in progress.
In addition, multiple descriptions and interpretations of the term ‘case study’ exist within
the majority of these studies raises issues of the generalisability of findings and
furthermore the process of generating theory to inform teaching and practice. The
checklist is offered as a practical approach to evaluate the rigor and validity of such
studies using the method; ensuring good stories are indeed based on sound empirical
evidence.
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