Theorizing in Design Research: A Systematic Review of Theory Development

There have been multiple calls to increase research impact and theory development in design research. Theory development has been tied to both scholarly impact (e.g., citations within and beyond a field) and practical impact (e.g., strength and reliability of interventions), as illustrated by fields that have transitioned from being predominantly applied to more theoretically grounded, such as operations management, psychology, and education. In past work, a systematic review of Design Studies found that “theory development has broken down in design research,” and other scholars have characterized design research as being “results rich, and theory poor.” Building upon past investigations, the present study examines how and to what extent the ASME Design Theory & Methodology (DTM) community has engaged with theory development. We conducted a systematic literature review of theory and theorizing in the Journal of Mechanical Design—all articles published in the Design Theory and Methodology category over the past 10 years (2014-2024). This was guided by similar reviews of theory development within the Academy of Management Journal and Design Studies. We found that 77 out of a total 264 Design Theory and Methodology articles (29%) contributed to a named theory or body of theory. Within this sample, we characterized the types of theoretical framings, theory developed, source theory, theorizing, levels of theory building and theory testing, and general research approaches. The results are encouraging in that a substantial amount of DTM articles have engaged with theory. We close with seven proposed opportunities across three main areas—theory-methodology fit opportunities, conceptual opportunities, and empirical opportunities—to further strengthen theory development in DTM and the wider design research community.