“Methods of Reasoning and Imagination”: History’s Failures and Capacities in Anglophone Design Research
- Submitting institution
-
Royal College of Art(The)
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- Teasley1
- Type
- C - Chapter in book
- DOI
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10.5040/9781474271332.ch-010
- Book title
- Theories of History : History Read across the Humanities
- Publisher
- Bloomsbury Academic
- ISBN
- 9781474271301
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- May
- Year of publication
- 2018
- URL
-
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
-
-
- Research group(s)
-
-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This research project explored the uses of historical methods and perspectives within the field of design research from the 1960s to the present day, the context for those uses, and their future potential. Working from methods developed within design history, it situated design research as a social practice shaped through its interactions with professional training and the academy, and as an economic practice within the higher education and research funding systems. To do so, it assessed how key figures within the ‘discourse communities or networks’ that constitute design research in the Anglosphere employed and understood history in two significant milieus and moments: the journal Design Issues in the 1980s and early 1990s; and interpretations of history for design in the early 2010s.
The argument was generated from the close reading of c. 150 journal articles, conference papers, books and other primary sources generated by design research practitioners from the 1960s to the present day. The narrative and interpretation emerged from comparison of evidence offered by these texts, using standard historical analytical methods to gauge soundness of evidence, reliability, bias and impact and significance for the field. The chapter was peer-reviewed by the book editors and historian colleagues prior to publication.
Design research draws infrequently on history as method. In contrast, findings allowed me to argue that history, as a method that is both forensic and problem-posing, might enable design research to attend even more carefully to the environments, impact and power relations of design, and, as a result, create more effective, ethical products. Ultimately, the output aims to bring history and design into dialogue: not through writing histories of design or by developing designs that reference national or other pasts, but through an exchange of methods.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -
