Design Thinking Research Symposium [DTRS 2012]
“Articulating Design Thinking”
18 – 20 April, 2012
School of Design, Northumbria University

The Process:
Between the 18th and 20th April 2012, the School of Design at Northumbria University will host the ninth Design Thinking Research Symposium [DTRS 2012]. The symposium entitled, “Articulating Design Thinking”, will be run along similar (but different) lines to the workshop-based events that we have seen in past DTRS and related events such as the “Delft Protocols” in 1994, the DTRS7 event “Analysing Design Meetings” in London in 2007, and the “Studying Professional Software Designers” workshop held at the University of California, Irvine in 2010. At these events, workshop delegates were asked to respond to a given common set of data (i.e. video recordings and transcripts).

DTRS 2012 at the School of Design, Northumbria University will, however, make a few changes to the workshop-based format and be run along the following lines:

-Delegates will be given a generic design brief (attached below), which nevertheless permits a variety of design and other disciplinary responses.

-Participants will make their own arrangements for tackling the brief, and can work either individually or as part of a larger team. The time you allocate to this activity and the “designed” outcome is unspecified.

-Once the design brief has been completed, each invited DTRS 2012 participant is requested to write up the design activity in a academic paper to be submitted for peer review.

- Participants are responsible for organising their own response to the design brief, arranging their design team, writing up their observations, analyses, interpretations and results in their paper.

- Each submitted paper is then double-blind peer reviewed and assessed for inclusion in the “Articulating Design Thinking” conference and planned book.

-DTRS 2012 is particularly keen to include novel and interesting papers that describe collaborations between industry (i.e. perhaps small SME-style enterprises, medium size companies or even global players), design students (i.e. undergraduate or postgraduate), academics and researchers from design disciplines and other relevant areas, and/or a combination of all of these.

The Papers
Invited DTRS9 participants should consider concentrating their paper on topical and relevant design research issues including, but not limited to, the following:

- Understanding and articulating the design process;
- Design communication;
- Design context;
- Design expertise;
- Design thinking;
- Design behaviour;
- Disciplinarity issues in design;
- Design knowledge;
- Language in design;
- Cross cultural issues in design;
- Co-designing;
- Socio-cultural issues in design

The Timetable Launch of DTRS9 Call-for-Participation – November 2010

Online Expression of Interest – 7th March 2011
Submit Full Paper – 30th May 2011
Final Paper – 24th October 2011
DTRS9 Event – 18th, 19th and 20th April 2012

More information on DTRS9 where you can formally state your expression of interest in taking part can be found here: http://www.northumbria.ac.uk/design/dtrs9