Design Research Society

Origins

The origins of the Society lay in the first conference on design methods, (full title "The Conference on Systematic and Intuitive Methods in Engineering, Industrial Design, Architecture and Communications") held at Imperial College in London in 1962, which enabled a core of people to be identified who shared interests in new approaches to the process of designing.

Early history

Initially, the DRS promoted its aims through a series of one-day conferences and the publication of a quarterly newsletter to members. However, within a few years, unsuccessful attempts to establish a published journal and fruitless internal debate about the Society's goals led to inactivity. The Society was revived by its first major international conference, on design participation, held in Manchester in 1971. At that conference a meeting of DRS members led to a call for a special general meeting of the Society, and to changes of officers and council members. Subsequently, a series of conferences was held through the 1970s and 80s: in London (1973), Portsmouth (1976, 1980), Istanbul (1978), and Bath (1984).

In the mid-1970s DRS also collaborated with the Design Methods Group, based in the USA, including publishing a joint journal, Design Research and Methods.

The DRS has had four honorary Presidents; Bruce Archer, 1992-00; Richard Buchanan 2000-06, Nigel Cross 2006- 17; Rachel Cooper 2017 to the present.

Special Interest Group for Objects, Practices, Experiences, Networks (OPENSIG)

The OPENSiG was originally launched in 2007 under the name 'Emotion, Experience and Interaction'. A special strand at the DRS conference 2008 and two successful workshops at Sheffield Hallam University (2007) and Nottingham Trent University (2010) served to define the group's interest in broad questions about human-object interactions – focusing on Objects and engaging with social Practices, which involve Experiences with/ of objects in Networks of relationship.

Design Research Society's Design Innovation Management Special Interest Group (DIMSIG)

Design Research Society's Design Innovation Management Special Interest Group (DIMSIG) in collaboration with the Design Society's Design Management Special Interest Group (DeMSIG) formed a cross-societal working party named the Design Management Academy (DMA). The Design School at Hong Kong Polytechnic hosted the first Design Management Academy international conference in June 2017.

Design Studies and Elsevier controversy

In 1995, Design Studies was acquired by the Dutch publishing company Elsevier. As of 2023, the journal received around 600 paper submissions annually and published around 35 papers per year, with an impact factor of 3.85. In February 2023, Elsevier informed the Editor-In-Chief, Peter Lloyd, that the journal needed to increase its acceptance rate, or risk closure, with the expectation that it needed to publish approximately 250 papers per year (translating to an acceptance rate of around 40%). To facilitate growth, without compromising the quality of the journal, the editorial board agreed to increase publication to around 50 papers annually.

On June 2, 2023, the editors were notified that Elsevier had installed a new Editor-in-Chief, prompting the Society to issue a statement condemning this action on the basis that they had not been consulted and that the new editor was not a member of the DRS, as was the journal's practice. On July 6, 2023, the DRS Executive Board issued a statement condemning Elsevier's interference, and its treatment of Editor-in-Chief, Peter Lloyd. Elsevier's actions received widespread condemnation from the academic community, many of whom drew comparisons with the controversy earlier that year surrounding Neuroimage, another prestigious academic journal in Elsevier's stable.

On July 10, 2023, Peter Lloyd resigned as the Editor-in-Chief of Design Studies along with all other editors and editorial board members. This included five editors (Associate Editors: Robin Adams, Colin Gray, Ann Heylighen; Deputy Editor: Fernando Secomandi; and Emeritus Editor in Chief Nigel Cross), and 29 members of the Editorial Board. A statement published on the Society's website explained this was due to "the unacceptable actions of Elsevier of 1) demanding a seven-fold increase in publications or facing closure; 2) appointing a new Editor-in-Chief without experience of publishing in the journal and without notification; and 3) changing the scope of the journal without consultation either with the editorial team or the Design Research Society."