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Design methods for collaborative knowledge production in inter- and transdisciplinary research
(2022)
The way humans have shaped the world so far has led to various fundamental and complex problems that we are currently facing: climate change, biodiversity loss, pandemics. Transdisciplinary sustainability research addresses such complex problems by including a great
variety of perspectives, forms of knowing and bodies of knowledge, including non-scientific ones,
in the research process. Design, understood in an expanded sense as a creator of transformative processes, also turns to these ‘wicked problems’. Based on their common concern, it is promising to bring both fields of research together productively. Therefore, this dissertation seeks to better
understand how design methods facilitate collaborative knowledge production and integration in
inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability research.
Through five independent papers, this dissertation contributes to addressing the research question
on four levels – conceptual-epistemological, empirical, methodological and practical. By exploring
the linkages between design research and inter- and transdisciplinary research, a conceptual basis
for the targeted use of design methods in collaborative processes of inter- and transdisciplinary
research is laid and their spectrum of methods is expanded. This is followed by the development of
a transformative epistemology in and for problem-oriented, collaborative forms of research, such
as transdisciplinary sustainability research, called problematic designing. Based on a deeper
understanding of integration and collaborative knowledge production, as well as its accompanying
challenges, empirical research into applying design prototyping as a method in and for situations of
collaborative research was conducted. To this end, the findings provide a fundamental basis for the
facilitation of inter- and transdisciplinary research processes when dealing with complex problems.
With its inherent openness and iterative approach in addressing the unknowns of complex
phenomena, design prototyping contributes to the required form of imagination that enables to
anticipate possible futures. Furthermore, by including visual-haptic modes of expression, design
prototyping reduces the dominance of language and text in scientific negotiation processes and
does justice to the diversity of cognitive modes.
Finally, the empirical findings of this dissertation emphasise the importance of the visual-haptic
dimension for collaborative knowledge production and the communication of knowledge, and provide insights into the visual structuring of human thought processes. The results on material
metaphors, collaborative prototyping and material-metaphorical imagery contribute decisively to
the basic knowledge of the epistemological quality of design and the importance of the visual and
haptic for thought processes in general. The extension and adaptation of existing analysis methods
in this dissertation add to the further development of analysis of visual-haptic data. The results are
once again reflected in the synthesis of this framework paper as cross-cutting issues. With developing design prototyping as a design-based intervention and its integration into the
epistemological perspective of problematic designing for inter- and transdisciplinary sustainability
research, this dissertation makes an important contribution to addressing complex future-related
problems and to creating change towards sustainability.