The initial motivator for the development of DRM, a Design Research
Methodology, and the subsequent writing of this book was our frustration
about the lack of a common terminology, benchmarked research methods,
and above all, a common research methodology in design. A shared view of
the goals and framework for doing design research was missing. Design is
a multidisciplinary activity occurring in multiple application areas and
involving multiple stakeholders. As a consequence, design research
emerges in a variety of disciplines for a variety of applications with a
variety of subjects. This makes it particularly difficult to review its
literature, relate various pieces of work, find common ground, and
validate and share results that are so essential for sustained progress
in a research community. Above all, design research needs to be
successful not only in an academic sense, but also in a practical sense.
How could we help the community develop knowledge that is both
academically and practically worthwhile? Each of us had our individual
ideas of how this situation could be improved. Lucienne Blessing, while
finishing her thesis that involved studying and improving the design
process, developed valuable insights about the importance and
relationship of empirical studies in developing and evaluating these
improvements. Amaresh Chakrabarti, while finishing his thesis on
developing and evaluating computational tools for improving products,
had developed valuable insights about integrating and improving the
processes of building and evaluating tools.
