Thomas Fischer
School of Design, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China
Design PhD research commonly faces conflicting criteria between doing justice to designing (from, systemically speaking, subjective inside perspectives) and doing justice to academic research (subject, systemically speaking, to scrutiny by objective outside criteria). The theory of inquiry presented here takes a cybernetic approach to distinguish different concerns and criteria of design research with reference to applicable systemic boundaries. It aims to facilitate the understanding of and to offer provide strategic risk management guidance for design research inquiries in the presence of conflicts between these concerns and criteria.
KEYWORDS: epistemology, cybernetics, design PhD, research, science, design