What’s design research ?

our view of design research

THROUGH

How can experimental research bringing together new technologies with ecological and social challenges produce solutions and knowledge addressing the SDD?

EPISTEMOLOGY

How to contribute to the sciences of conception through a symetrical anthropology and the study of the in-discipline du design?

FOR

Can we invent new design methods and tools that address the challenges of systemic design? What are the roles of models and simulation environments?

ON

How do humans/ non humans codesign ? What are the emerging skills and fields of design?

Research on extreme design

The research conducted by CY design school analyzes forms of extreme design, emerging design that reinvents itself.

In order to achieve sustainable development goals, many actors are reinventing themselves, transforming their ways of working, changing their products, forming original partnerships, and engaging in unprecedented collaborations. New materials are being designed, manufacturing methods are being reimagined, and local and global public policies are being envisioned and put into practice.

CY design research group observes and analyzes the work of these new breed of designers. Our objective is to better understand the new environments and dynamics of design: New materials in design, from living organisms to AI; new scales that raise questions of visualization, representation, translation, mediation, and collaboration; increasing complexity and work in the unknown, requiring intermediate design objects, prototypes, and simulations of a new kind.

Research for sustainable transition

CY Ecole de Design is involved in collaborating with actors of ecological transition to develop scenarios, methods, and proof-of-concepts (POCs), as well as their evaluation:

The methodologies that validate the proposals of stakeholders and designers need to be reconsidered. POCs, demonstrators, and all intermediate design objects must be renewed in order to learn from the social, technical, or cultural proposals of designers.

This approach allows for the assessment and refinement of concepts, ensuring that they align with the desired goals of ecological transition. It also emphasizes the importance of continuous learning and improvement in the design process, incorporating feedback from stakeholders and taking into account the social, technical, and cultural aspects of the proposals.

Research for living infrastructures

The changes in scale, the diversity of design mediums and actors, and the emergence of new design objects have several implications for research, including methods, structures, and disciplines:

Research methodologies in design need to evolve to find ways to observe these new forms of multi-site, multi-partner, multi-tool design. The articulation of disciplines and vernacular knowledge in practice needs to be considered: interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity must be analyzed to understand their potential for generating new knowledge and disciplinary alliances.
New collective intimacies: the infrastructures to be invented will rely on creative, deliberative, and decision-making practices. Design for debate, agonistic design, and territorial design are ways to rethink the modalities of design and decision-making.