In the meantime, we welcome ideas for exciting and experimental ways for the RTD community of researchers to engage in future editions of the conference. Please do get in touch with any suggestions or considerations: researchthroughdesign@gmail.com.

We ask those that are interested in hosting RTD 2021 to submit an expression of interest by the extended deadline of 16th August 2019. Expressions of interest in the form of a one-page PDF should be emailed to: researchthroughdesign@gmail.com.

Proposals should consider the following.
– Who and what will be the hosting institution(s)?
– Organisational committee plans – who will be the General Chairs?
– What might be the potential conference theme, and how does this relate to the proposed venue and the RTD ethos and format?

Following the deadline of the 16th August, we will review proposals and discuss them with those who have expressed interest, around the development of their ideas.

We expect issues of conference budget and establishing roles of previous chairs as advisors will be discussed after the expression stage.

If you would like an informal discussion about an expression of interest with one of the steering committee, please contact us directly at this email address and one of us will get back to you to arrange a meeting as soon as we can: researchthroughdesign@gmail.com

Many thanks again for your continuing interest and support of the conference,
All the best from the RTD Steering Committee.

By hosting RTD in the Netherlands, the RTD 2019 chairs continued to open up the conference to new audiences and conversations, exploring the frictions and affinities among different research-through-design traditions.

Documentation from the conference is available to view via the RTD 2019 website, including a blog post about a Participatory Documentation set of activities that took place during the conference with attendees.

Hosting RTD in the Netherlands, the RTD 2019 chairs continue to open up the conference to new audiences and conversations, and to help it grow as an international forum for practice-based research that engages all disciplines of Design. RTD 2019 will explore the contemporary socio-material, economic and technological shifts in research-through-design that call for new ways of making. Key features of the RTD format, including Rooms of Interest and the Exhibition, will remain at the heart of the conference, where we will productively explore the frictions and affinities among different research-through-design traditions.

Building on the success of RTD 2017 at The National Museum of Scotland (NMS), and the creative partnership of the RTD 2017 chairs with NMS staff and curators, the Science Centre in Delft for RTD 2019 offers exciting new opportunities for developing experimental formats for dissemination.

Pieter Jan Stappers and Elisa Giaccardi have recently published a chapter in The Encyclopedia of Human-Computer Interaction (2nd Ed.) for the Interaction Design Foundation, on ‘Research through Design’, which contributes a vocabulary and a rich setof conceptual resources, perspectives, and exemplars of work, to our growing international community.

Articles in this special issue focus on work that was exhibited and discussed at the Research through Design (RTD) Conference held in Cambridge, UK in 2015. The RTD conference was established in 2013; the 2017 edition was recently held in Edinburgh, UK; and the next edition will take place in The Netherlands in 2019.

In this issue the authors uniquely reflect, not just on the processes and outcomes of ‘research through design’, but also on the experience of being involved in the RTD conference itself, and critically evaluating the design of the event. Many of the articles highlight interesting opportunities and challenges for developing experimental dissemination platforms that support design practitioners and researchers and that place the material artefacts of design, along with the practices at the heart of proceedings.

Contributors to this issue include those who presented work at the RTD 2015 Conference, extending accounts of this work, and delegates who offer reflections on attending in 2015: Amy Twigger Holroyd, Alex S. Taylor, Kristina Andersen, Dan Gibson, Jane Norris, Elizabeth Edwards, Paul Coulton, Andy Derby, Mike Chiasson, Rebecca Taylor, Jon Rogers, Jo Foster, Sean Kingsley, Nantia Koulidou, Erika Shorter, Mike Shorter, Natasha Trotman, Ian Lambert, and Chris Speed. The guest editors were Abigail Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace and Joyce Yee, with an introduction from the journal editors Bruce Brown, Richard Buchanan, Carl DiSalvo, Dennis Doordan, Kipum Lee, Victor Margolin, and Ramia Mazé.

Featured image from article by Kristina Anderson and Dan Gibson. Photo Credit: Dan Buzzo.

Through the theme ‘New Disciplines of Making – Shared Knowledge in Doing’, the 2017 chairs continued a discussion and debate exploring how the artefacts and processes of practice-based research can become tangible outcomes. The conference programme explored ideas around the nature of knowledge ‘in doing’, and how we ‘unpick’ tacit forms of knowledge arising from processes that are often intuitive and impulsive, and sometimes recognised only on reflection – when the process has ended.

33 out of 233 submissions were included in the final programme, after being peer-reviewed by members of the Programme Committee and reviewers in the growing RTD community.

The RTD 2017 incorporated a number of Provocations alongside presentations and discussions of exhibited work. Invited speakers at RTD included Prof. Elisa Giaccardi of TU Delft, and Azusa Murakami and Alexander Groves of Studio Swine. As the conference was hosted by NMS, there was rich opportunity to hold two panel discussions that brought museum curators into conversation with design researchers and practitioners about relationships between artefacts, research, and museum spaces.

A new addition to the format for RTD 2017 was a day of workshops, which created the opportunity for researcher-practitioners to be ‘hands-on’ in making and experimenting and new materials, engaging multiple areas of exploration including printmaking, sandcasting and mapping. More information on the workshops is here. Outputs from experimental making at each workshop were presented back to delegates during the event.

The RTD 2017 proceedings were published through Figshare. Documentation from RTD 2017 will be available via the series website soon.

The image above shows the ‘Documentation Wall’ from RTD 2017, where professional conference scribes and delegates added sketches and comments about their unfolding conference experience.

By bringing together a set of perspectives on RTD 2015, the SI hopes to offer experiential insight from those who attended and exhibited, about what it means to both practice and disseminate ‘research through design’ (RtD) and what the opportunities and challenges are for this burgeoning community. By doing so the collection aims to contribute to a growing academic discourse about practicing design as a knowledge generating activity.

See the full Call for further information about the SI themes and making a submission.

Special Issue of Design Issues to be published in 2017
Guest editors: Abigail Durrant, John Vines, Jayne Wallace and Joyce Yee

Timetable (revised March 2016)

Submission Deadline: May 16^th 2016
First Notification: August 12^th 2016
Final Paper Submission: October 14^th 2016
Final Version for Publication: February 3^rd 2017
Publication Date: TBC

researchthroughdesign.org/2015DI

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