DRS Town Hall Meetings

The DRS Executive Board is hosting Town Hall meetings in early 2021. Each meeting will explore a core topic for the DRS: PhD research, future conferences, design research leadership, publishing, and DRS Special Interest Groups (SIGs). The Town Halls are an opportunity to get to know the new DRS leadership, meet other members, and get involved with the Society. You might also boost your design research know-how in the process! All events are free and also open to non-members, but registration is required.

Upcoming Town Hall Meetings:

Special Interest Groups of the DRS: A User Guide
30 April, 12:00-14:00 (UK Time)

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Fostering Worldwide International Collaborations
21st May, 15:00-17:00 (UK Time)

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Previous Town Hall Meetings:

Next Generations: Connecting the DRS PhD Research Community 
14 January 
Further Information

Designing DRS Conferences of the Future
28 January
Further Information

Developing a Design Research Leadership Pipeline
11 February
Further Information

Publishing Design Research within the Society and Beyond
26 February
Further Information

It's Always 5 O'Clock Somewhere: International DRS Virtual Coffee Break
29 March, multiple time zones
Further Information

Distance Design Education Resources

The DRS Special Interest Group in Design Pedagogy (PedSIG) is working with colleagues and institutions to support design educators continuing to move to distance and online teaching in response to the events of 2020 and the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. This transition to distance education is a particular challenge for design educators, since design curriculum often relies heavily on physical and proximate teaching and learning, particularly in the studio.

PedSIG, in collaboration with The Open University Design Group, have developed shared teaching resources available on the Distance Design Education website. The site features recipes, articles and resources about teaching, learning, staying connected and collaborating at a distance. It includes all the recordings from the series of Distance Design Education Meetups, where colleagues from around the world share their experiences and practices.

You will also find the open education resource Creating Distance Design Courses, which outlines some of the approaches and ideas used at The Open University in the UK.

In 2021, the site aims to continue support and is keen to hear from colleagues with suggestions of what would be most useful in supporting educators.

If you want to contribute material or take part in future events, then please get involved or stay in touch. Over the past year the community has learned from one another regardless of knowledge or experience: everyone has had something valuable to share.

As always, best wishes from the DRS—stay healthy and safe.

Introducing the New Design for Policy and Governance Special Interest Group

We’re very pleased to announce a new DRS Special Interest Group (SIG)—Design for Policy and Governance (PoGoSIG). The group will bring together researchers, designers, and academics to explore how design can drive innovation in policy and governance. The group is led by convenor Scott Schmidt along with organising committee members Rachel Cooper, Michelle Douglas, Leigh-Anne Hepburn, and Louise Mullagh.

Scott explains what inspired the SIG: “Recent global events such as the mass pandemic has led to calls for greater innovation in the interface between governments and their public. Design for Policy and Governance, a potential solution, is the process of systematically developing effective human-centered policies based on a combination of collaborative approaches, evidence-based criteria, and novel concepts while leveraging design-driven research methods.”

PoGoSIG will be an engaging and informative resource for anyone interested in the intersections of design and policy, hosting discussions and events, developing new research materials, and collecting and sharing relevant information on the topic. Read more about this group and their mission on the PoGoSIG page and contact the SIG leadership team to get involved!

The DRS has 12 SIGs including PoGoSIG. See the full list here. Members can join a SIG or start a new SIG by sending a proposal to the DRS Executive Board.

Launch of the New DRS Digital Library

We are very proud to present the new DRS Digital Library. It is an open-access hub for all things design research. It includes the full back-catalogue of DRS conferences (1971-2020) and research outcomes from many DRS SIG events. We are working to expand the content even further and will host publications and materials from design research events across the world.

DRS Executive Board member, Anna Vallgårda, is leading the Digital Library and said “I cannot express enough how exciting this is! It is a big deal for the design research community. It will provide consistent access to materials and will help consolidate design research as an independent and maturing research discipline.”

DRS Chair,  Peter Lloyd, also added: “the new Digital Library is a key part of the DRS strategy going forward. We are focussed on increasing the quality of design research through our peer-reviewed conferences and events, and by providing a central repository for design research publications.”

The Digital Library is built on the Bepress Digital Commons platform from Elsevier Science. This makes research materials easier to access, cite and explore. All content is listed with full DOI information, will be searchable and citable in Google Scholar, and makes full use of the range of referencing and citation analytics that Elsevier offers. Authors of recent papers can receive monthly readership reports and anybody can set up an account which will allow them to save searches and set up alerts on relevant new material when it's uploaded.

Be sure to visit the DRS Digital library at https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/ and follow #DRSLibrary on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Conference organisers and journal editors should contact DRS Publications and Archives Editor, Darren Umney dl@designresearchsociety.org to inquire about adding design research material to the collection.

DRS Student Research Bursary Winners 2019

We received 30 DRS Student Research Bursary applications this year—a record number! These bursary awards provide funds to carry out a research project. This includes data collection, equipment purchase and prototyping, but not normally conference travel or fees. Two DRS Council members reviewed each submission based on quality, value for money and impact. Bursary coordinator Robin Roy conducted a final review of high-scoring applications. This resulted in five full awards of 500 GBP and four awards of 250 GBP. Offering full and smaller awards enabled us to issue nine bursaries, instead of the seven we budgeted for.

The bursary winners were Pushpi Bagchi, Britta Boyer, Tung Dao, María José Izzo, Alessandra Peppi, Viola Petrella, Valentina Marques da Rosa,  Virginie Tessier and Florencia Varas. The winners are based in Chile, Brazil, Canada and the UK. Their research topics are broad and include a comparative project on transnational education in the UK and Shri Lanka (Bagchi); collaboration with UK-based companies to increase product life (Dao); hospital design to reduce distress for children undergoing cancer treatment (Marques da Rosa); and assessment guidelines for student designers learning to work collaboratively (Tessier).

Author

Robin Roy, DRS Student Research Bursary Coordinator

Introducing Darren Umney, DRS Publications and Archive Editor

The DRS is pleased to announce the appointment of Darren Umney as Publications and Archive Editor. Darren will take responsibility for consolidating and developing the historic and ongoing publishing activities of the DRS with a particular focus on academic papers, reports and conference proceedings.

Darren will join the DRS support team that includes Online Editor Isabel Prochner and Administrator Linda Anderson. The support team works with the DRS Council and manages the day-to-day operations of the Society.  

Darren began his career as an artist and has experience in film making, performance art, exhibition curation and online newspaper publishing. In addition to his role with the DRS, he works as Associate and Managing Editor of the Journal of Cultural Economy. He received his PhD from the Open University (UK) in 2016. His thesis explored the implications of studying parliamentary debate, and positioned the parliamentary process as a design process.

Darren received a DRS 50^th Anniversary Student Bursary, which he used to uncover the archaeological history of the Society. He also conducted an online performance—tweeting retrospectively about early DRS conferences. This work contributes to the growing DRS archive and was presented at DRS2016 in Brighton.

As Publications and Archive Editor, Darren is looking forward to consolidating his historical exploration of the Society. He also has an important role sharing past, present and future DRS work with members.

New DRS Digital Library in the Works

The DRS recently subscribed to the Bepress Digital Commons platform, run by Elsevier Science, to create an open-access digital library for all DRS publications and archive material. Digital Commons is used by many leading universities, societies and organisations around the world to manage institutional research publication needs (see full list). We will use this new platform to publish papers from new and existing conference proceedings as well as for historical material associated with the Society.

The Digital Commons platform will make DRS publications much easier to access, cite, and explore, taking advantage of a broad range of referencing and citation analytics that Elsevier has to offer. Many DRS publications are currently available here, but the webpage is somewhat limited and difficult to search for individual papers. The new platform also provides an opportunity to expand DRS publishing activities.​​

We are currently customising the platform with a planned launch in several months. 

Stay tuned for updates, sneak peaks and the official launch!

If you would like to know more, please contact the publications and archives editor Darren Umney at: library@designresearchsociety.org

The DRS at the World Design Summit: Report

The Design Research Society was invited to participate, along with many other International Design Societies and Organisations, in the World Design Summit which took place in Montreal on the 23rd and 24th October 2017. The purpose of the Summit was the development of a joint Declaration – a position statement to identify the unique role, capacities and value of design and design-related disciplines in the current global context. The declaration outlined how design impacts and can better address aspects of economy, culture, environment, and society and serves to galvanize the resources and skills of the international design, planning, architecture and landscape architecture communities in articulating a bold vision of a design-driven future.

Delegates at the World Design Summit in Montreal

The Design Research Society came relatively late to the process, in August this year, but the declaration has been many years in development. In 2015 seven international organizations representing industrial design, interior design, interaction design, graphic and communication design, landscape architecture and housing and planning jointly declared design’s critical role in shaping the world that meets global development goals fostering sustainability, equality, diversity and long term economic viability. Conceptual convergence has come about by focusing on that which is common between the disciplines and the shared desire to strategically leverage the unique capacity of design to address pressing global needs.

The draft declaration was considered by the DRS Council prior to the summit and, though there was some criticism that the role of design researchers and Universities wasn’t prominent enough, it was thought this was an initiative that aligned well with the aims and objectives of the Society. The summit itself was conducted as a UN style negotiation, with each society/organisation having up to two delegates. Professor Peter Lloyd represented the DRS as Vice Chair and head delegate, with Professor Tiiu Poldma as supporting delegate (though also head delegate for IASDR). Societies who had indicated that they would be prepared to sign the declaration were given the chance to speak in various sessions to comment on various aspects of the draft delegation. On behalf of the DRS it was suggested that design research (and research in general) as well as forward thinking design education, should be a key component of any future involving design solutions at the global scale.

DRS Vice Chair, Peter Lloyd signs the Montreal Design Declaration on behalf of the DRS

Following two days of commenting on the declaration - comments that will be taken account of in the next stage of implementation - the summit ended with a signing ceremony where 25 international design organisations along with several International Non-Governmental Organisations, amongst them UNESCO and other UN Global Compacts, signed up to what is now known as the Montreal Design Declaration. 

It will be interesting to see what follow’s from a declaration of such ambition and scope, but several of the possible projects listed as examples could be taken on by the DRS - see the text of the declaration below for project outlines. Aside from the declaration many good connections were made with the leaders of other Organisations and Societies, so future partnership working and collaboration will be a possibility. Many at the Summit were aware of the DRS, and very positive about its participation at the event. For those that were unaware, the Design Research Society will now be on their horizon. The DRS’s contribution to the Summit, and participation going forward, will mean an increased level of influence on the world design stage.

For Further Details

Please contact the DRS Administrator: admin@designresearchsociety.org 

For Reference

Read the Montreal Design Declaration

Website for the World Design Summit

The United Nations Sustainable Development goals