We are seeking to use the opportunities arising from this project to establish a network of Design Research professionals. Please join us!
We are not entirely sure what platforms and technologies our network will use to stay connected and we are trying different things out. At the moment we have three channels:
- have an invite-only messaging group, this is mainly comprised of people who attended the Jamboree and those who attended the Atlas workshops as part of our Lab Engagements - if you would like an invite, then please just ask!
- have a public Design Research Works Discord Server that you can join here (if you aren’t familiar with Discord, it’s a similar type of system to Slack, a Discord user guide is over here)
- We also invite you to join our mailing list for updates about the project in general, as well as the information about the Network
Why a Network?
We think that there’s an opportunity to really empower the Design Research community by setting up a network and there are two big issues we hope to address.
1. A human powered Atlas
In our Atlas workshops one issue that repeatedly came up is that there is a huge amount of knowledge about great examples of Design Research methods and practice, however they can be hard to find. While we are hoping to address that with the Atlas project, another way of addressing it is by making it easier to ask people for help. So, rather than trying to get all the information about Design Research out of peoples heads and into an Atlas or database, with a network you can simply go and ask the question directly.
2. Probing the ‘third space’
At our Jamboree event a theme that repeatedly came up was the concept of a ‘third space’. This was a term that we began to use to describe something in between the academic and industrial worlds. Powered on by the enthusiasm of Julian Bleecker - someone who I think already navigates the third space successfully with Near Future Laboratory - we tried to imagine a future where some kind of collective ould do world-leading academic research as well as putting those insights into practice in industry/non-academic contexts. We hope that, over time, this network could become such a collective.
This is an experiment!
Above all else, we’re not sure what this network will become, but have a hunch that there’s value in it. If you want to come along for the ride.. please jump aboard!
- if you want to join the private group, ask
- join the discord and say hello!
- join our mailing list