Building a Cohesive Body of Design Knowledge: Developments from a Design Science Research Perspective

Design is an extremely diverse field where there has been widespread debate on how to build a cohesive body of scientific knowledge. To date, no satisfactory proposition has been adopted across the field – hampering scientific development. Without this basis for bringing research together design researchers have identified difficulties in building on past works, and combining insights from across the field. This work starts to dissolve some of these issues by drawing on Design Science Research to propose an integrated approach for the development of design research knowledge, coupled with pragmatic advice for design researchers. This delivers a number of implications for researchers as well as for the field as a whole.