Evaluating the efficacy and effectiveness of design methods: A systematic review and assessment framework

The increasingly transdisciplinary context of design, where designers collaborate with other disciplinary and domain experts, means there is a growing need to evidence the effectiveness of design methods. We address this need in two ways. First, we propose a ‘chain of evidence’, from motivation to claims, operationalising this in a systematic...

A Framework of Design Method Corroboration

Practitioners design artifacts of different kinds. Researchers and practitioners both create methods for designing such artifacts. The question arises whether those methods are actually valid and useful. In this conceptual paper, we argue that there is a need for “method corroboration”-the deliberate and reflected use and possible validation...

Conceptualising sound-driven design: An exploratory discourse analysis

Sound-driven design is an emerging, human-centered design practice informed by technology and listening in the multisensory dimension of interaction. In this paper we present a discourse analysis approach aimed at qualitatively understanding the constituent concepts of such a practice, by means of semi-structured interviews with sound...

You make it and you try it out: Seeds of design discipline futures

This paper takes a narrative seam through the design discipline, attempting to explain how design methodology, one of the three types of Nigel Cross' designerly ways of knowing, has changed over the 40 years of Design Studies. Specifically, the paper identifies the point when a ‘social turn’ in the discipline occurred, allowing more nuanced...

A logical critique of the expert position in design research: beyond expert justification of design methods and towards empirical validation

This paper gives a general and logical analysis of the expert position in design research bywhich methods for innovative design can be derived from expert design practices. It firstgives a framework for characterising accounts of design by the way in which they defineand relate general, descriptive and prescribed types of design practices....

A Culture-Inspired Approach to Gaining Insights for Designing Sustainable Practices

This paper explores a design method to generate insights for designing less resource-intensive forms of everyday life. This study takes the assumption that looking at cultural diversity can widen the variety of insights which can be used as a source of inspiration for designing sustainable practices. However, there is a lack of clear-cut...