Design is becoming a recognised academic discipline, and design research is the driving force behind this transformation. Design Research Now – Essays and Selected Projects charts the field of design research with introductory essays and selected research projects. The authors of the essays, all leading international design scholars, stake out positions on the most important issues of design research. They locate the significance of design research at the interface with technological development, describe what makes it a necessary ingredient of the continued development of the design disciplines, and assign it a seminal role in the relevant developments of society. The essays are supplemented by the presentation of recently completed research projects from universities in the Netherlands, the UK and Italy.

Ralf Michel, Academy of Art and Design, Basel, Switzerland

Gui Bonsiepe, The Uneasy Relationship between Design and Design Research Nigel Cross, From a Design Science to a Design Discipline: Understanding Designerly Ways of Knowing and Thinking Richard Buchanan, Strategies of Design Research: Productive Science and Rhetorical Inquiry Klaus Krippendorff, Design Research, an Oxymoron? Pieter Jan Stappers, Doing Design as a Part of Doing Research Paul Chamberlain/Peter Gardner/Rebecca Lawton, Shape of Things to Come Ianus Keller, For Inspiration Only Joep Frens, Research Through Design:aCamera Case Study Ezio Manzini/Anna Meroni, Emerging User Demands for Sustainable Solutions, EMUDE Wolfgang Jonas, Design Research and its Meaning to the Methodological Development of the Discipline Beat Schneider, Design as Pratice, Science, and Research Susann Vihma, Design Semiotics - Institutional Experiences and an Initiative for a Semiotic Theory of Form Ezio Manzini, Design Research for Sustainable Social Innovation