PhD Home People Research      Research Areas      Dissertations Resources	PhD Research > Research Areas Design has its own unique point of view. Like psychology, the social sciences and business management, design looks at artifacts from the outside. It considers the implications of the artifacts on users, enterprises and the culture. At the same time, like engineering and art, design looks from the inside, at construction and properties of those artifacts. Design brings these concerns together to articulate the larger goals and translate them into structure and properties. Thus, while many related fields provide useful knowledge, they are fragments of the knowledge needed in Design. Design is badly in need of knowledge to ground and extend practice, and to communicate itself to others. This is not the knowledge of practice but knowledge behind the knowledge of practice which organizes, deepens and shapes practice. The goal of the Ph.D. in design at ID is to build that knowledge base and definition of design by theoretical work and theory building research in the major design areas outlined below. Design Systems The goal of this research is to obtain a coherent and logical description of models of design processes and knowledge which provide a theoretical and representational basis for developing effective methodologies and methods. In the attempt to build understandings of the nature of design activities, for example, analytical studies of design cases and formal approaches are complementarily pursued to develop a theoretical framework. A coherent model of design process and knowledge leads to the introduction of an effective methodological framework which is applied to the development of methods and tools in specific interest areas such as design planning, interaction design and communication design. This domain of research also extends to the development of computer-implemented systems such as a design knowledge base and a life cycle design support system in order to reflect real world needs and validate proposed theories, methodologies, and individual methods. Understanding Users & Contexts The goal of research in the domain of Users & Contexts is to develop a systematic and complete general framework that encompasses human use and design process development as interactive partners. This currently under explored area is ripe for development from both the human use and design process sides - particularly in the areas of overlap. Clarity of purpose should mark information observed or solicited from the user in relation to its usefulness to an unfolding design process. Other disciplines, like the social sciences, may lend impetus to the development of particular user-centered design methods, however design needs to develop and refine its own methods that better accomodate design intelligence within its own process particularly with regard to the concept of the user. Languages & Media of Communication The goal of research is to develop a comprehensive understanding of the communicative aspects of design. While examining theory from other disciplines, the focus is to look deeply at communication function within design and to develop specific theory. Methods which serve to analyze, synthesize, classify, stage process development or assess design communication in general or in terms of sub-categories of visual representation such as photographs, diagrams, icons, indices, symbols, three-dimensional models, computer simulations, etc. are possible targets of opportunity. Combinations of sensory codes such as image, sound, movement and user interaction need to be considered beyond traditional applications as they are technologically possible and facilitate communication. Interactive Systems The primary concern of this research domain is to understand and facilitate creation of interaction mechanisms between users and artifacts. While the notion of interaction introduces new perspectives and possibilities for design, interactive systems design requires a new range of interdisciplinary knowledge and method. In order to establish a theoretical foundation for developing design methods and design principles, syntactic and semantic structures of "language interaction" are investigated. Spacio-temporal aspects of interaction are critical as a basis for understanding and designing dynamic qualities of user experience. In order to incorporate these new dimensions in the process of interaction design, a coherent group of methods for activities such as observation, description, analysis, modelling, design and evaluation needs to be explored. As a result of developing new insights and conceptual frameworks for interactive systems, exploratory design principles and paradigms are also developed and prototyped. Strategic Design Planning [ Innovation Planning Toolkit ] Innovation planning processes need to accommodate inputs from various specialty areas such as market research, engineering, design, business management, branding, finance, strategy, and others. Although the planning tools used by these specialty areas are varied and numerous, there is a lack of systemic tools to ensure the integration and shared communication among members. There is a great potential for companies to use integrated processes to make their planning efforts more robust and efficient. Previous research has identified three main drivers for successful innovations - business, technology, and design. Successful innovations address all three drivers in an integrated way. They are also the result of well-informed, purposeful, disciplined hard work. To plan for successful innovations, we need comprehensive frameworks, structured methods, and rigorous tools. The focus of this research is to formalize an innovation toolkit. The following are specific areas for concentrated research under the umbrella of "Innovation Planning Toolkit." - User Insights Database It is standard procedure during user research, for teams working on a project, to use databases to organize data gathered from the field. But these databases are created specific to a project and can seldom be used for a second project. Moreover, each team working on a project develops very specific analytical tools and language to describe observations and ideas. The focus of this research project will be on conceiving databases that can be reused across projects and across teams and thereby making the innovation process efficient. - Tools for Insights to Innovations The process of moving from research to ideation challenges innovators. While intuition can help, for complex problems, innovators need reliable, structured tools and methods to make this transition effective. Analysis tools are needed to see patterns and extract insights from research data. These insights can then be used as principles on which to base ideas. This research project will focus on a set of frameworks, methods, and tools that help innovators transition from insights to innovations. - Idea Management Tools In the genesis and synthesis phases of an innovation process, teams explore many ideas and produce a large number of them at various levels. For innovation teams, the challenging part is to devise an efficient way to organize, compare, cluster, evaluate, share, and modify the large number of ideas they produce. Capital allocations and the subsequent success of implemented innovations depend a lot on an efficient idea management system. The focus of this research is to understand how teams and individuals manage ideas and develop an efficient working model for an idea management system. - Generic Innovation Strategies Framework Innovation planning tools benefit much from embedded knowledge in the tools. This area of research focuses on making a generic framework that organizes the many basic strategies innovations use. It will build on the author's previous work on developing an innovations typology.
	Updated: Sep. 21, 2007 Copyright © 2007 Institute of Design, IIT Comments: yahahn at id dot iit dot edu