Design practice reimagined: New fundamentals through a study of co-design and practice based doctoral studies. (Cruickshank, L., Brewster, L., Potts, D. & Owen, V., 2024)
Collaborative design is ubiquitous and can provide support for communities and organisations to envisage and deliver more equitable and joyful futures. What often seems to be a simple enough process of engagement can, however, be a complex activity. The issue with co-design is often a fundamental one, design is not easily explained. Designers and academics will often be able to explain what design is and the literature provides definitions that have been honed over many years. It is also relatively easy to find frameworks or models that provide prompts when to carry out an activity or task, these elements are reasonably straight forward to explain. This paper focuses on the searching from the fundamental principles that lie beneath these models, for the hidden epistemological perspectives that are seldom examined or shared. A multidisciplinary group from [author institution] came together from design research, design practice and linguistics and, through a series of reflective sessions, explored the possibility of identifying and articulating the essence the epistemology of the act of designing. This paper presents the start of this journey and is intended to provoke questions rather than present neat solutions. Provocatively we posit that the epistemological prototype model presented below underpins all design, inside and outside academia and the design profession.
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