UNAM
Revista Digital Universitaria
Revista Digital Universitaria ISSN: 1607 - 6079 | Publicación mensual | 1 de julio de 2013 vol.14, No.7

ABSTRACT

Practice-based research: A new perspective for design education

Verónica Ariza



The entrance of design in universities has contributed to rethink the relation theory-practice in the education of the designer and the importance of a balance between them in the exercise of the profession; this has led to rethink also the concept of research in design teaching. The most common way to understand research in design is as a process step or a tool to project, but every day the conceptual framework is expanding helping to understand design research as a way to generate knowledge from practice. This paper shows that experience of design can be documented and compared with existing knowledge in order to generate valuable and new notions, this is the nature of design practice, but we have to think about this specialization, contextualize and problematize from critical frameworks; design research involves the study of objects (configuration, identity, discourse) but also how the designers think, work and solve design problems, also means the study of disciplinary tools used not only to design, but for read the designed world, all this systematic search is a bridge to other areas of knowledge, an essential condition for the education of new professionals. For this work we will review the ideas of Frayling, Margolin, Bonsiepe, Saikaly, Buchanan, Bayazit, and specialists in the practice-based research.

Keywords: Design; education; research; theory; practice; knowledge.