2007 Design Research Summer School

Carnegie Mellon is pleased to offer the Design Research Summer School. The summer school is open to students of all disciplines who wish to advance their knowledge of research designs or the process of designing. Through thoughtful readings, discussions, lectures and activities, our goal is to engage in lively discussions about the nature of design research, the norms of the field, the open research questions, and the accepted research paradigms.

Students from various disciplines will exchange ideas about what is recognized as good design research questions, the approaches to answering those questions, and the standards for evaluating the answers. We will examine designed artifacts and their descriptions to identify various strategies and methods of design. We will also compare paradigms for doing research about design and designing things.

We seek students from all disciplines: computer science, engineering, science, humanities, social sciences, arts, business, public policy, etc. This course will benefit PhD students who are just starting their thesis work on a design research topic or whose research involves a substantial design component.

The objectives are to provide each participant with the ability to:

• Identify his or her research area, characterizing it in terms of strategies for design research, the types of journals that accept work of that kind, and the intellectual leaders of the area;
• Explain the character of design in his or her research area; know or be able to identify the models, methods, and techniques to do design research in his or her area;
• Evaluate a description of a design research problem, question, or objective and supporting plan and judge whether it is a significant and well-posed design research problem supported by a feasible plan;
• State a design research problem, question, or objective in his or her research area, explain why it pertains to design research and why solving it is important, give criteria for evaluating the result, and sketch a plan for carrying out the project.

To achieve the objectives, participants are actively engaged in the summer school: the emphasis is on discussions and exercises based on the research projects of the participants.

Important Dates