Abstract
Although the development of methods and tools was for many decades the main focus of design research, transfer of research results to practice has been fragmented and limited and, hence, had a low impact. Various studies into the problems involved in transfer have been undertaken the uptake of the recommended improvements has been limited. One of the reasons, in our opinion, is the lack of a coherent, and agreed upon set of heuristics. This is where we intend to contribute. In this chapter we focus on the transfer of design research results into practice as experienced by those who have been involved in their development. Our aim is to propose a preliminary set of best practice heuristics for researchers to enhance the chances of successful transfer of research results into practice as a starting point for discussion and further research.
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- 1.
The term support refers to “the possible means, aids and measures that can be used to improve design. This includes strategies, methodologies, procedures, methods, techniques, software tools, guidelines, information sources, etc., addressing one or more aspects of design” (Blessing and Chakrabarti 2009).
- 2.
Gregory (1984) speaks of Design Technology comprising “general design technology and broadly applicable techniques, domain specific procedures and techniques, and CAD systems and processes” “It includes all the essentials for the execution of design work.”
- 3.
The percentage indicates the percentage of participants who agreed that a particular heuristic applies to the successfully transferred research result.
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Acknowledgments
We are indebted to Tim McAloone for undertaking some of the interviews, and to the Design Society’s Advisory Board members and Leaders of the Special Interest Groups for their active involvement in the meetings. Without them, there would be nothing to report. We also wish to thank the National Research Fund Luxembourg (FNR) and the School of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for their financial contribution toward the first author’s sabbatical stay at MIT, which allowed her to do the research described in this paper.
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Appendix: Draft Set of Heuristics
Appendix: Draft Set of Heuristics
Table 5 contains the categorized heuristics resulting from the two meetings. The first column indicates from which meeting the heuristic results. The second column contains the heuristics. The last column shows the applicability of each of the heuristics to the successfully transferred research results that were discussed in the 2012 meeting. No frequencies are available for the new heuristics that were proposed by the participants in 2012 and those that were proposed in 2013.
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Blessing, L., Seering, W. (2016). Preparing for the Transfer of Research Results to Practice: Best Practice Heuristics. In: Chakrabarti, A., Lindemann, U. (eds) Impact of Design Research on Industrial Practice. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19449-3_1
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