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program (01) = what is design science ? |
Designing in the Designed World
Technology all too often impacts our daily lives in ways that were unanticipated by the creators of the technology. An example occurs in biotechnology where the development of new genetic tests for disease is now coupled with a growing concern for how individuals cope with this information, how they manage their risk for disease given test results, and what kinds of defensive actions individuals take. Less dramatic examples occur with common artifacts, from toasters to computer keyboards, to software and video games, to automobiles and their components, even to spaces, such as homes and shopping malls. How can the design of artifacts incorporate a perspective broader than the mere functionality the artifact attempted to address originally? How can concerns over unforeseen use or unintended consequences of technology be incorporated directly into the original design thinking? How can we design products that are not only need-focused but also use-focused, taking into account the way they may affect us or change us individually and collectively?
Engineering designers start with models of the inner workings of a product to guide the design process. For example, the design of a coffee maker involves analysis of power supply and water heating. The engineering design process is a search for the configuration that optimizes a particular objective or set of objectives under physical or resource constraints. The engineering designer may ponder how design decisions affect the ease and speed of making coffee and the price per cup, but may not ponder how the coffee machine will change the user’s life style: Is fresh coffee better (fewer chemical breakdowns)? Would a large capacity dispenser vs. a personal machine change office social dynamics? How does coffee use relate to rainforest destruction? How do you pose the business case for a new coffee maker? Even such simple devices have very complex interactions with their users, their users’ lives and the world at large.
Design Science
Design science is an interdisciplinary study. Clearly many disciplines play a role in design. Engineering design models are often product-focused rather than use-focused. The term use-focused refers not merely to the particular interaction of the product with the user but also to the broader societal context in which the product will be used. Other disciplines approach design differently. Industrial design does focus on how the artifact will be used, and employs techniques to assess user needs, such as interviews, observations and focus groups. Marketing also focuses on the needs of the user, but often the focus by marketers is less on product development and more on sales. A limitation inherent in the knowledge these disciplines produce is that the information is usually qualitative and not easy to incorporate into the quantitative models used by engineers. Marketing does use quantitative models that are now gradually linked with the quantitative models used by engineers. Ergonomics and human factors provide yet another view of artifact-user interaction, physical or cognitive, often leading directly into questions addressed in the life sciences and psychology. If you ask further how designs will be produced and where, how they will reach their customers, what are the natural and capital resources expended, or what is the environmental life-cycle impact of the entire enterprise, you can see that the range of disciplines potentially bearing on design is large.
The new field of design science systematically couples these multiple traditions, knowledge domains, and viewpoints. Its foundation is the quest to use analytical, quantitative or qualitative models derived from diverse disciplines and link them in a rigorous decision-making framework. Creating and understanding appropriate models, methods for linking them, and validating the results in actual design situations requires a new research and education paradigm. The design science doctoral program at the University of Michigan offers a unique opportunity to pursue and build upon this new paradigm.
