Doctoral Education in Design: - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Doctoral Education in Design:
Problems and Prospects
Víctor Margolín

The Nature of Design Research
En octubre 1998, the first conference on doctoral education in design
was held at Ohio State University. Sponsored by Design Issues, El
School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, and the Department
of Industrial, Interior, and Visual Communication Design at Ohio
State University, it brought together participants from a number of
countries and resulted in a published set of papers.1 In his keynote
address to the conference, Richard Buchanan, then Director of The
School of Design at Carnegie Mellon University and a co-editor of
Design Issues made a distinction between paleoteric thinking, cual
he said was “based on the identification of discrete subject matters such
as we find throughout the university today,” and neoteric thinking,
which was “based on new problems encountered in practical life and
in serious theoretical reflection.” The goal of paleoteric education,
él continuó, was to “expand the knowledge of a particular subject
asunto, often in greater and greater detail,” while the goal of neoteric
education was to “gather resources from any area of previous
learning in order to find new ways of addressing the new problems,
thereby creating a new body of learning and knowledge.”2 Buchanan
envisioned doctoral education in design as a neoteric enterprise that
could become “a model of what the new learning may be in our
universities and in our culture as a whole.”3

Since that conference and several others that followed in La
Clusaz, Francia (2000), Tsukuba, Japón (2003), and Tempe, Arizona
(2005), interest in doctoral education in design has increased
importantemente, and a large number of new programs have been
established.4 Today they exist in many countries and more are on
the way, despite the fact that the fundamental questions about what
constitutes doctoral education and what it is for remain unresolved.
Most new programs appear to be devised locally without reference
to others elsewhere.

What then are we to make of this cacophony of doctorates,
each claiming that its recipients possess a body of knowledge
that both signifies a mastery of the design field and qualifies
them to contribute to it by producing research of their own? A
raise questions about the state and status of doctoral education,
we also need to consider the state of design research, a field that
itself remains equally cacophonous and without a set of shared
problematics. Of most concern, at least to this writer, is a lack of
© 2010 Instituto de Tecnología de Massachusetts
Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

This article appeared in a slightly different
version in Elisava TdD 26 (Noviembre 2009).

See Richard Buchanan, Dennis Doordan,
Lorraine Justice, and Victor Margolin,
eds. Doctoral Education in Design 1998:
Proceedings of the Ohio Conference,
October 8–11, 1998 (pittsburgh: El
School of Design, Carnegie Mellon
Universidad, 1999).
Richard Buchanan, “The Study of Design:
Doctoral Education and Research in
a New Field of Inquiry,” in Doctoral
Education in Design 1998: Actas
of the Ohio Conference, October 8–11,
1998, 6–7.
Ibídem., 7.
See David Durling and Ken Friedman,
eds. Doctoral Education in Design:
Foundations for the Future. Actas
of the Conference held at La Clusaz,
Francia, 8–12 July 2000 (Staffordshire:
Staffordshire University Press, 2000)
and David Durling and Kazuo Sugiyama,
eds. Proceedings of the 3rd Doctoral
Education in Design Conference, Tsukuba
International Congress Center, Tsukuba,
Japón. 14–17 October 2003.

3
4

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consensus as to how we identify the subject matter of design and,
of equal importance, what design research is for and how different
communities of researchers contribute to its purpose.

The first question may be easier to answer than the second.
Richard Buchanan was correct when he stated in his Ohio State
address “design does not have a subject matter in the traditional
sense of other disciplines and fields of learning.”5 Elsewhere he
broadly characterized the subject matter of design thus: “Design is
the human power of conceiving, planificación, and making products that
serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and
collective purposes.”6 Buchanan’s broad definition is one that I share.
A related definition had been put forth twenty years earlier by Bruce
Archer, director of the Design Research Department at the Royal
College of Art in London. In a seminal conference paper on design
investigación, Archer stated that design was “the combined embodiment
of configuration, composition, estructura, purpose, valor, y
meaning in man-made things and systems.”7 What the definitions of
Buchanan and Archer have in common is that they conceive design
broadly and do not limit it to a set of given taxonomic categories. Como
Buchanan noted, designers are continually inventing new subject
asunto; de este modo, it is not possible to limit the investigation of design to
a fixed set of material or immaterial products.

Given the fact that design is not fixed but is continually
developing, we need to distinguish between how it is constituted
as a subject for design researchers and those who educate them
and how subject matter is constituted for scientists and scholars
in the humanities. When we study design, we study a form of
human action that arises from a social situation. Design is thus part
of the study of society rather than nature. According to the social
constructivists, society itself is a contingent phenomenon whose
structure and organization, like design products, is human made
rather than decreed by nature. Like design research, social research
may be concerned with what has been done, what currently is, y
what might be.

Sin embargo, I do not wish to draw too close a comparison
between the social world as a constructed entity and the world of
products, which is only one part of it.8 The social world is far more
complex and requires many more disciplines to study its diverse
aspectos. Sin embargo, the realm of design does partake of this
complexity in that the production, distribución, and use of products
are part of a larger social process.

I now want to distinguish the study of design from two
other subjects that are rooted in the natural, rather than the social,
world. I am not going to draw a reductive comparison between
the two worlds, claiming that the natural world is completely a
product of nature and the social world is completely a product of
human construction. De hecho, humans have intervened in nature
throughout history and what appears to us as the natural world

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

5
6

Buchanan, The Study of Design, 7.
Richard Buchanan, “Design Research and
the New Learning,” Design Issues 17:4
(Otoño 2001): 9.
Bruce Archer, “A View of the Nature of
Design Research,” in Robin Jacques and
James A. Powell, eds. Diseño, Ciencia,
Método (Guilford, Reino Unido: Westbury House/
IPC Science and Technology Press, 1981),
30.
See my essay, “The Product Milieu” in
Richard Buchanan and Victor Margolin,
eds. Discovering Design: Explorations in
Design Studies (Chicago and London: El
University of Chicago Press, 1995).

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today is a world that has absorbed these interventions. Sin embargo,
what differentiates today’s natural world from the social world
is the degree of cause and effect that arises as a result of human
intervención. To clarify this difference, let us look at the history
of research on the human body that has lead to our current
understanding of health and its absence.

For centuries, researchers have mapped the human body,
identifying its anatomy, its organs, and more recently its genetic code.
On the basis of this mapping, theories of medicine arose that today
are the basis for maintaining a given level of health. As a result of
medical knowledge, a host of interventions that range from medical
procedures and drugs to artificial limbs and organs has evolved.
There is much that we still do not understand about the human body
and the factors that cause its illness, but many problems have been
identified and researchers continue to work on them.

The reason for mentioning the human body here is to
present a research paradigm that I will then compare with a related
paradigm for design research. To make my point, I will not make
reference to the research on the human mind, which is considerably
less developed than that on the body in that we can explain less
about how and why humans behave as they do than we can about
how the body functions. The paradigm of research on the body is
based on the following premises:

• There is a discrete phenomenon—the human body—to be

investigated. That phenomenon is essentially stable.

• Research on the human body is cumulative. Qué

researchers in the past have discovered contributes to our
current knowledge.

• There is a consensus on the criteria that the different

methods for studying the human body must meet to be
accepted as valuable.

• Applications of the accumulated knowledge about the body

result in productive interventions.

• There is a broad consensus on what constitutes a healthy

body and agreement on what impedes health.

• Accumulated knowledge of the body has led to the

identification of research problems that will advance
that knowledge.

In sum, the history of research on the body has resulted in a
community of medical investigators who work within a relatively
well-defined set of problems. Their investigation is supported by
a system of pedagogy, journals, conferences, and funding from
government and private sources. The funds allocated by the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation or the World Health Organization,
Por ejemplo, are based on the confidence that money well spent will
help to eliminate certain diseases.

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

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We can also consider another research paradigm based on the
study of the earth and the natural forces that affect it. Over centuries
geographers and other scientists have mapped the physical structure
of the earth and learned to understand the delicate balance of its
surrounding environment and its ecosystems that also include living
beings from insects to humans. As with the human body, tenemos
seen that absent the conditions for healthy living, the earth becomes
unhealthy. Este, in turn affects the quality of human life.

Given the vast complexity of the earth compared to the
human body, it is easier for skeptics to doubt the claims that the
earth’s health depends on particular conditions that are partly
created by human behavior. Too much carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere, many scientists argue, contributes to global warming.
Evidence is to be seen in the melting of the polar ice cap and in severe
climate change. Many types of researchers—biologists, geophysicists,
botanists, chemists, and lots of others—study the earth. A pesar de
they work in different fields, their research methods are compatible
and the findings of researchers in one field can be related to those
in another. As with the study of the human body, there is a general
consensus on research methods and on how to assess the validity of
research results.

By contrast with the natural world, the constitution of
the social world as a field of study entails a far higher degree of
constructivism than the study of the human body or the earth; eso
is to say, there is no point of origin where the social world was
given to humans as a prior phenomenon. It was and continues to be
created by us. A través de los años, many social scientists have sought to
explain social processes in terms of laws, but these explanations have
always been tentative and only a few have resulted in satisfactory
predictions of social behavior that can be counted on.

The fact that design is a contingent practice makes its study
significantly different from the study of a given phenomenon like
the human body or the earth. On the one hand design is evident in
what has already been done—the products that have been created in
the past along with the conditions of their production and use. On
the other hand, design is an activity that produces new products;
hence, its study needs to focus in part on how that is done, what new
products might be produced, y cómo.

The history of design education is rather short. Diseño
for industry and mass communication arose from craft practices
and techniques. Although the Industrial Revolution began in the
eighteenth century, the practices that we today call product design
and graphic design had their roots in the 1920s and 1930s, y
educational programs to train designers began in those years.
Master’s degrees in design that qualified designers to teach others
are a post–World War II phenomenon. Bruce Archer writes that
the Design Research Department at the Royal College of Art was

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

9 Archer, “A View of the Nature of Design
Investigación," 32. Archer does not indicate
in his article, sin embargo, when the first
PhD in design was awarded at the RCA.

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converted in 1976 to a postgraduate teaching department where
Master’s and PhD degrees were awarded.9

Although it is clear that the principal purpose of the Master’s
degree was to prepare teachers of design by offering more advanced
design courses and the opportunity to engage in a modest research
proyecto, the purpose of a general doctorate in design has never been
well articulated. In several countries, the doctorate has become a
symbol for research and has been made a requirement for teachers
of design. De este modo, the degree is more symbolic than pragmatic and
the need to do research is not driven by a shared research problem
or set of problems but instead by the need to maintain the status of
the degree.

Problems with Design Doctorates
We can cite a number of reasons why the purpose of design
doctorates remains unclear or questionable. First is the dissociation
of design research from the design professions. Even though design
within the broad definitions of Buchanan, Archer, and others can
embrace engineering, architecture, and computer science, también
as product design, interior design, and communication design,
these communities of practitioners are sharply divided, y el
fields of engineering, architecture, and computer science have their
own doctorates. The communities of product and communication
designers have not been engaged in discussions about doctoral
education in design, and consequently the international design
asociaciones, such as ICOGRADA (International Council of Graphic
Design Associations), ICSID (International Council of Societies of
Industrial Design), and IFI (International Federation of Interior
Designers/Architects) have little or no connection to the world
of design research as it is represented by IASDR (Internacional
Association of Societies of Design Research).10 Consequently the
general field of practice is not calling for a higher degree to meet a
specific purpose. The result of this is that the general field of practice
is not calling for a higher degree to meet a specific purpose. El
consequence is that there is no formal relation between the design
research community and those who design.

A second reason is that a great deal of interesting work that
might well be called design research is being carried out by experts
who were not trained in the field. Large corporations like Google,
Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and many others hire PhDs
for their research teams in fields ranging from electrical and software
engineering to anthropology and psychology. Deutsche Telekom, para
ejemplo, has a large research center, Deutsche Telekom Laboratories,
that does research on future products and services. Intel also hires
academics to conduct fieldwork on how consumers use mobile
phones and other products. One can assume that extensive research
on new products continues in all large corporations that produce
consumer goods. These range from Samsung in Korea to Nokia in

10 Members of the IASDR are the

China Institute of Design, the Design
Research Society, the Design Society,
the Japanese Society for the Science
of Design, and the Korean Society for
Design Science.

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

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Finland. En general, there is no clear connection between the needs
of these companies for experts in the design of complex objects
and systems and the universities that should be producing such
experts. One explanation for this lack of connection is the Media
Lab at MIT, where doctorates are awarded to students who work
on a range of projects that involve design, although such projects
are not necessarily called by the name. Graduates of the Media Lab
are well prepared to undertake design-related tasks of an advanced
naturaleza, and some find their way to positions in large corporations.
The newly-formed Aalto University in Helsinki, which resulted from
a merger between the University of Art and Design, the Helsinki
School of Economics, and the Helsinki University of Technology,
also plans to offer advanced studies in design-related fields to
meet the government’s call for more innovation. Desafortunadamente, el
research done by industry is proprietary and does not form part
of the achievements with which the international design research
community is publicly identified.11 Consequently, a survey of
research topics as indicated by various conference proceedings does
not yield a strong sense of consensual problems for which researchers
are finding solutions.

An additional reason why the purpose of design doctorates
remains unclear or questionable is the lack of communication
between the different design research communities that exist in
fields like engineering, interaction design, software design, y entonces
adelante. Although much research in these communities is technical
and therefore not easily accessible to those outside the immediate
circle of researchers, there is little discussion in the general design
literature about how relations between these research fields might
be improved.

One conclusion to draw from this analysis is that doctorates
in design need to have some focus, just as they do in the related
field of engineering. There is no single doctorate in engineering
nor is there a single engineering research community. Generally, a
university has a College of Engineering with separate departments
for electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, civil engineering,
bioengineering, aeronautical engineering, and other specialties, todo
of which were created to address specific sets of practical problems.
En el futuro, we may see something similar in design as doctorates
are offered in interaction design, transportation design, organización
diseño, social network design, service design, sustainable design,
and many other potential fields.12 Such doctorates ought to arise as
problem areas are identified, thus lending assurance to students in
those programs that they will be entering a job market that has a
need for their expertise.

To complement these doctorates in design, there is a need
for advanced degrees in design history and design studies. Diseño
history is already a distinct field with various opportunities for
doctoral study. As a research field it is well developed with several

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

11 There are occasional exceptions to this

situation of proprietary research. See the
article by Genevieve Bell, a staff anthro-
pologist at Intel, “Satu Keluarga, Satu
Komputer (One Home, One Computer),
Cultural Accounts of ICTs in South and
Southeast Asia,” Design Issues 22:2
(Primavera 2006): 35–55.

12 Ver, Por ejemplo, the special number of
Design Issues dedicated to Design and
Organizational Change, Design Issues 24:
1 (Invierno 2008).

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academic journals, regular conferences, and a stream of high-quality
research that comes not only from trained design historians but also
from historians in diverse fields who find design compelling as a
subject of research. The one problem in the field is that it is defined
too narrowly. Most design historians tend to concentrate on the
paleoteric taxonomies of objects rather than embracing the neoteric
manifestations of design practice.13

Design studies is also an aspect of design research whose
territory has yet to be clarified. I would argue, as I have done in the
pasado, that design history can be seen as one strand of a broader field
of design studies.14 Together they investigate design as it was and
currently is, concentrating on the production and use of products.
Design history, sin embargo, focuses on design in the past, while design
studies embraces the present as well. There are good reasons to
create doctoral programs in design studies, since the graduates of
such programs would not be expected to be designers as well unless
they had prior training as practitioners. Por el contrario, the expectation
for someone with a PhD in design should be that he or she is capable
of designing something. Por lo tanto, specialization is required to gain
knowledge that will prepare graduates for specific tasks.

Moving Forward
To sort out the confusion that exists in the fields of design research
and doctoral design education, the following issues need to be
addressed:

• The difference between research in design and design

studies needs to be made clearer so that doctoral degrees
in one or the other can more accurately indicate what
expertise the degree holder has. Design studies researchers
can engage a broad range of topics that may lead to a better
understanding of design as a phenomenon rather than to
a transformation or amelioration of practice, although that
is not precluded. Design researchers, por otro lado,
should be contributing to a transformation of practice,
either by critiquing something current that seems deficient
or proposing something new.

• Distinctions need to be made between the different kinds

of design practice so that degree programs geared to one or
another practice can be developed.

• Some discussion is called for on core curricula for all

doctoral programs in design. As the situation exists, hay
no guarantee that two doctors of design will have read any
of the same literature or have been exposed to any of the
same research methodologies

• More attention needs to be paid to design’s relation to
other practices and disciplines that might be drawn
upon in doctoral education.

I address this issue in my essay “Design
in History,” Design Issues 24:2 (Primavera
2009): 94–105.

14 See my essay, “Design History and

Design Studies,” in Victor Margolin, El
Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design
and Design Studies (Chicago and London:
The University of Chicago Press, 2002).

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

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To envision how the field of design research might develop further,
we can return to the distinction that Bruce Archer makes between
the way a lexicographer and a mathematician think about language.
“The lexicographer,” says Archer, “attempts to discover the meaning
of words and phrases on the basis of the ways in which the words
and phrases are actually used and meant by the community
concerned. The mathematician, por el contrario, is careful to define
his terms, either for the occasion or in reference to some previous
worker’s definition.”15 Archer’s preference is for the lexicographer’s
acercarse, which he admires for its flexibility. His distinction
between deriving meaning from usage or prior definitions can also
hold for design researchers. Rather than define research objectives
too strictly, it is more productive, as Archer suggests, to build on
what other researchers are actually doing. Research nodes, cual
represent accumulations of related research activities, need to attract
interest through their potential for significance and value. Cuando
the researchers in a field are clear about what they do, such nodes
appear readily. When the research agenda is murky, they do not
appear at all.

Conclusión
Despite the fact that the subject matter of design research is not
as clearly defined as the human body or the earth, much valuable
work has been done. Design research is international, although the
communication of results between researchers in different countries
is hampered by the lack of a common language. Although English
is the most prevalent language among researchers, there are many
scholars in Brazil, Japón, Korea, Porcelana, and other countries whose
work is not known outside their own language group.16 This is
particularly evident in design history, where much research has
been published in non-Anglophone languages and is unknown to
most English-language design historians. Como consecuencia, a lot of what
is already known is absent from the design history surveys, cual
leave out design in large parts of the world.

There is a need to review the history of design research and
identify a group of texts that are still seminal to researchers, si
they are historical documents or more recent books and articles.
Such texts should form a pool of possibilities for core curricula
whose contents can be shared by researchers in different doctoral
programs.17 The purpose of such texts within a research community
is to constitute a common heritage to reinforce the idea that design
researchers are engaged in a shared enterprise, no matter how diverse
their interests. I am not advocating a single core curriculum but
rather consideration of a large pool of texts from which individual
core curricula can be drawn. This pool would certainly include the
hundreds of articles that have been published in the major academic
design journals since the 1970s. It would include as well the writings

Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010

15 Bruce Archer, “A View of the Nature of

Design Research," 30.

16 There are regular design and design

studies research congresses that are held
in Japan, Korea, Brasil, and elsewhere
in languages other than English. El
proceedings of these congresses, si
not bilingual as they rarely are, remain
unknown to researchers in Europe and
the United States, who occupy a major
position in the international design and
design studies research fields.

17 See my bibliographic essay, “Postwar
Design Literature: A Preliminary
Cartografía,” in Victor Margolin, ed. Diseño
Discurso: Historia, Teoría, Criticism
(Chicago and London: La Universidad de
Chicago Press, 1989), 265–288.

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of scholars and theorists ranging from the nineteenth century to the
present. Texts by John Ruskin, William Morris, Thomas Carlyle,
Adolf Loos, Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, George Nelson,
Tomás Maldonado, Gui Bonsiepe, Gert Selle, Donald Schön, Lucy
Suchman, Albert Borgmann, Langdon Winner, Ivan Illich, Victor
Papanek, Richard Buchanan, Víctor Margolín, Dennis Doordan,
Erik Stolterman, Gillo Dorfles, Ken Friedman, Terry Love, Clive
Dilnot, Herbert Simon, Alain Findeli, and many others provide rich
material for courses in doctoral programs. There should also be more
reference to such texts in what we might call the meta-literature of
the field—the body of research that reinterprets and reevaluates key
documents—just as is done by scholars in sociology, anthropology,
literature, and art history.

As the artificial world continues to expand in its relation to
naturaleza, design is too important a subject to be ignored. We humans
are the stewards of this artificial world just as we are responsible
for the natural one. Only by preparing ourselves to manage an
increasingly complex natural and social environment in which
design plays an ever more important role will we be able to fulfill our
duty as good stewards. Well-conceived and highly focused doctoral
programs in design are central to this task.

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Design Issues: Volumen 26, Número 3 Verano 2010
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