The Design Research Society is the multi-disciplinary learned society for the design research community worldwide. DRS was founded in 1966, and since then has established a record of significant achievements in contributing to design knowledge. You can visit the DRS website at www.designresearchsociety.org

About the conference

We propose to the community of design researchers to think and report on complexity as it is encountered in a variety of the designed product, experience or service:

1. In the conception phase, the complexity of design lies in the many parameters or criteria that shape the designed product, experience or service: technical, ergonomic, aesthetic, cultural, symbolic, economic, etc. Another level of complexity lays in the design processes which respond to complex logics that are not easily put into an axiomatic formula (creative phases, imagination, reflection-in-action, etc). Finally, there is the actors’ dynamic (including the designer) which is the result of the interplay of rhetoric, negotiation, power plays, values, knowledge, ideology, and so on.

2. When considering the reception of designed products, experience and services, design is faced with understandings of the users that far exceed any single disciplinary model that has been proposed so far, by the likes of cognitive or behavioural sciences, cultural anthropology, microeconomics, semiotics, etc. In the designing disciplines, these models have failed more often than not to be completely relevant to practices: How can we account simultaneously for man as a sensible, emotional, rational, embodied being, requiring a viable material and immaterial world?

Therefore, to design, to educate a future designer or to conduct research activities in the field of design in 2010 requires complex approaches to a variety of issues and phenomena. DRS 2010 will offer participants of all horizons the opportunity to share their point of view regarding (1) the complexity of issues and phenomena in design or (2) the complex approaches developed in their response.

 

Since DRS 2010 will be held in a French speaking city and university, DRS 2010 will exceptionally welcome contributions in French.
Pour plus d’information, consultez l’invitation en français.

DRS 2010 Organising committee

Conference Chair:
Prof Philippe Lalande
(École de design industriel, Université de Montréal, Québec, Canada)

Conference Co-Chairs:
Dr Anne Marchand
Dr Rabah Bousbaci
Dr Philippe Gauthier
Dr Tomás Dorta
(All from the École de design industriel, Université de Montréal, Québec, Canada)

External committee:
Prof Alain Findeli
(Université de Nîmes, France)
Prof Wolfgang Jonas,
(University of Kassel, Germany)

Reviewing Committee
David Durling, UK (Chair)
Lin-Lin Chen, Taiwan
Tiiu Poldma, Canada
Seymour Roworth-Stokes, UK
Erik Stolterman, USA, Sweden
Rabah Bousbaci, Canada
Philippe Gauthier, Canada

Conference Secretary:
Michel de Blois
(Université de Montréal)

Webmaster:
Ignacio Calvo
(Université de Montréal)
Camille Moussette
(Umeå University, Sweden)

Site graphic design:
Annemarie Lesage
(Université de Montréal)