New Special Interest Group (SIG)
Design Research Quality
SIG Leaders: Philip Cash, Romian Pinquie, Jaap Daalhuizen and Joshua Summers
The Design Research Quality SIG aims to enhance the quality of design research by celebrating the diversity of perspectives, methodologies, outputs, and impact within the field. Our goal is to provide practical support, systems, and structures that benefit the wider design research community, fostering collaboration and transparency. We want to do this in a way that makes quality transparent and accessible for the whole design research community, accelerating and democratizing the evolution of design research practices.
To achieve this, we have established a diverse and equitable leadership team able to help bridge design research communities.
If you are interested in joining the team, contributing to the SIG, or receiving updates, we would love to hear from you! Email us at philip.cash@northumbria.ac.uk and romain.pinquie@grenoble-inp.fr
This SIG aims to foreground discussions on design research quality, characterized by the following criteria:
- They enhance the quality of design research, celebrating the value derived from the field’s diversity in perspectives, methodologies, outputs, and impact
- They are vital to the research endeavour, distilling and translating quality insights into concrete, actionable guidance for design research practice.
- They are dynamic and reflexive, foregrounding the evolution of practices in design research, as well as reflecting relevant developments in related fields.
- They are relevant to design practice, connecting needs and opportunities in practice with research needs, outcomes, and impact.
- They are transparent and accessible for the whole design research community, accelerating and democratizing the evolution of design research practices.
- In setting this scope, we align with the Design Research Notes initiative and want to build cross-community dialogue with at least the Design Society, DRS, and IASDR. We want to provide a foundation for further developing cross cutting design research quality discussions as well as producing concrete outputs for the field.
The immediate objectives for this SIG are (~2 years):
- Identify key research quality needs within the Design Society, leveraging the work already done as part of the Design Research Notes and Benchmarks in Design Research to develop an actionable set of research quality projects for the next 2-5 years.
- Bring together research quality initiatives across the field to provide a more coherent focal point for these discussions as well as more accessible resources for the community.
- Build a common community around research quality that links Design Society and DRS researchers.
The longer-term objectives for the SIG are (~2-5 years):
- To deliver key resources for improving design research quality in the field, including but not limited to, a sustainable, high-quality outlet for research quality publications; a research quality guide and associated set of accessible research quality resources; and a plan for a collaborative research education drawing together major centres of design research.
- Build a community-based open science hub for cross community sharing and development of research quality initiatives and promotion of quality focused research.
- Foster a design research culture that ensures research that is relevant to practice and reliable, for example through development of epistemological understanding or quality standards for practice oriented output (e.g. design methodology).
- Expand the scope of the common community for design research quality to include the IASDR and CHI communities.
All the latest information and news on SIG activities will we available on the Design Research Quality SIG website, which is expected to be released in the coming days.
The Design Society SIG community
Don't forget to explore all of the SIGs we have as part of the Design Society community and get involved as a DS member! You can see what SIGs we have available here: DS Special Interest Groups