Toward a Discipline-Dependent Scholarship

Abstract

Abstract This article explores the relationship between design and research, and design and scholarship. It argues that merging design and research is untenable since each activity embodies a different epistemological perspective and set of values. More importantly, overtly integrating design and research diminishes the most important aspects of each activity. Instead, designers should characterize their work, and the knowledge that it uses and produces, as an intellectually separate but complementary counterpart to research. In doing so, designers take the first step toward developing a discipline-dependent scholarship whereby the discipline itself determines what constitutes knowledge and consequently what qualifies as scholarship.