Design studies is important to the design practice because it works to advance design practice through improving designer’s attitudes while also pushing design practice to be more like a scientific discipline. In the introduction for her book Design Integrations: Research and Collaboration, Sharon Poggenpohl wrote an essay titled Time for Change: Building a Design Discipline. In her essay, Poggenpohl lists certain flaws that designers as a whole need to address to improve the field and protect against colonization by other disciplines. Another prominent figure in design studies Christopher Crouch is also working on improving design practice though design studies. In his book Doing Research in Design (co-authored by Jane Pearce), Crouch works to compare design with other research based disciplines to help show that they are similar enough for research into design to be valid.

In her book, Poggenpohl writes a list of flaws designers struggle with. While Poggenpohl goes into intense detail for each of the items on the list on page 16, I will exclude it for the sake of brevity. A shortened version of her list is as follows:

“Designer as lone genius creating (auto)biographical design . . .
Designers tend to not be broadly analytical . . .
Designers, when they write or present, avoid attribution . . .
Designers avoid writing and reading . . .
Designers endlessly search for the ‘new’ . . .
Designers’ competitive posture is evident both privately and publicly  . . .
Designers focus on practice with high interest in the doing of design . . .
Designers often misunderstand science . . .”

(Poggenpohl, 16)

While design studies works to address these flaws in designers, there are three in particular that are the most important to address:

“Designers as lone genius . . .
Designers endlessly search for the ‘new’ . . .
Designers often misunderstand science . . . ”

(Poggenpohl, 16)

The first point affects teamwork and helps keep the design community divided. This point is addressed by design studies through an encouragement of collaborations and compilations (Poggenpohl, 16). An example of this would be Poggenpohl’s book itself, which is a collect of essays by design scientists. The second point comes from a lack of centralized or documented knowledge (Poggenpohl, 16). Design studies seeks to document design and disseminate the information though scholarly articles and essays. Finally, the third point causes designers to reject the notion that design and science can be on the same level because they see design as an evolution and science as concrete. The opposite is true however, and science is indeed an evolution as well (Poggenpohl, 16). In fact, Crouch compares the two in his book and works to draw similarities.

In Crouch’s book, he spends much of his time comparing research and design to each other in an effort to help push for an expansion of the design studies field. Some of his key points on page 21 included:

“design and research are about initiating change in man-made things.
initiating change pushing Design into the social realm, where research already sits.
The dynamic relationship between problem and solution in the social realm means that a solution is never in itself complete, and may well reveal, or create, new problems.
A question is the mechanism that can model the problem/solution dynamic.
The role that individual subjectivity plays (in framing problems, questions and Solutions) needs to be acknowledged as both a help and a hindrance in this process he is.”

(Crouch, 21)

By establishing a research based branch of design like design studies, we are helping address one of Poggenpohl’s designer flaws and strengthening design’s position as a valid discipline. Realizing that design is a form of research is also important in making sure that we improve the review and dissemination of information throughout our field. Design today has a tendency of being isolated from itself, leading to designers making the same breakthroughs over and over again. Ultimately, design studies will help better organize design practice by improving designer attitudes and restructuring the field to be more like a scientific field.