Ken Friedman

Tongji University · College of Design & Innovation

Design involves solving problems, creating something new, or transforming less desirable situations to preferred situations. To do this, designers must know how things work and why. Understanding how things work and why requires us to analyze and explain. This is the purpose of theory. The article outlines a framework for theory construction in des...

This paper considers how we create design knowledge. It examines the ways that research contributes to design knowledge in theory and in practice. The paper will ask seven important questions: What is the nature of design? How does the nature of design involve knowledge of certain kinds? What are the sources of knowledge? How does research function...

Learning to communicate research with scholarly and scientific impact requires effective writing. This demands clear, active narrative and engaging explanation. Researchers must explain the issues they address and the actions they take to answer research questions. They must provide a careful meta-narrative to communicate their thinking and researc...

Les universités australiennes ont reçu récemment une liste de revues de recherche transmise par l'Australian Research Council (ARC). Cette liste offre un classement de ces revues à l'initiative de l'ERA : Excellence in Research for Australia. Des revues de design et de recherche en design figurent parmi les revues classées. Mais elles sont peu nomb...

This keynote presentation will explore the challenges of interdisciplinary research. In an era when universities and research authorities call on us to work across and among disciplines for research and publishing, we suffer from institutional structures, funding patterns, and journal policies that make this nearly impossible. The presentation will...

The primary objectives of this study were to identify a set of journals that report on industrial design research and to propose quality rankings of those journals. Based on an online survey, design journals were assessed in terms of two quality metrics: popularity and indexed average rank position. We find that both general and specialized design...

Mature theory construction in design research has been hampered by ill-considered ideas. The notion of research by design is such an idea, conflating practice and research in ways that make explicit theory development difficult. This article examines some of the problems associated with the notion of research by design. It also examines the roles o...

The word “artifact” comes from two Latin words. The first, “arte”, means “by skill”, from “ars”, skill. The second, “factum”, is the past participle of “facere”, to do or to make.The word dates back to the early 1800s, meaning “something created by humans usually for a practical purpose; especially: an object remaining from a particular period” and...

This is the author’s manuscript of an article published as: Friedman, Ken. 2006. “The Case for Bengt af Klintberg.” Performance Research: A Journal of the Performing Arts, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 137-144

Information and place have always been linked. From prehistoric forest and hydraulic empire to canal network and the networked knowledge economy, the space of flows gives rise to the way human beings perceive the world as well as to the objects they perceive. The historical relationship between information and place is important in understanding Cy...

New knowledge and powerful forces, such as technology and globalization, have converged to present significant challenges to traditional marketing curricula. It is time for educators to rethink marketing education, including curriculum design and teaching methods. This article discusses the forces shaping the future of marketing education, presents...

This paper introduces the concept of pathological process as a framework for analyzing the development of libraries. This concept is a research metaphor that permits a richer and more organic understanding of the Library as a social institution than is accessible through other metaphors. We argue the need to understand Libraries as complex, organic...

Design involves solving problems, creating something new, or transforming less desirable situations to preferred situations. To do this, designers must know how things work and why. Understanding how things work and why requires us to analyze and explain. This is the purpose of theory. The article outlines a framework for theory construction in des...

Over the years since 1962, many event scores have been published under the aegis of Fluxus. The scores have appeared in boxes and multiple editions, on cards, in books and catalogues, and in several other forms. Several of us have presented our scores as exhibitions, on paper as drawings, calligraphy or prints, and on canvas as silk‐screens or pain...

Good referencing is central to the growing literature of design research for four main reasons: reasoned argument, access to common evidence, building the field, and improving the intellectual and practical quality of the discipline. This article outlines the foundations of referencing and citation. It clarifies central issues in referencing and ci...