Design Studies, initially started in Great Britain in the early 1980s. And today it has become an international enterprise. Design studies comprises research programs that emphasize on the study of design practice, design discourse, design products as well as the study of design history and theory. There is a lack of shared community among all design researchers as they often belong to several communities and are confined between them. However, the Design Research has expanded tremendously with the help of journals and conferences. Victor Margolin, in his essay The Multiple Tasks Of Design Studies, discusses some of the tools of design studies drawn from may researches in the past.
He begins with the 'design methods' movement in Great Britain. The two leading figures in this movement were Bruce Archer and John Chris Jones. Archer was first generation theorist and his method was to categorized design into a set of distinct topics which attracted many criticism too. Then the second generation theorist believed in making design studies as a subject like 'science' based on observations. .
By then, there was flexibility and openness in the movement and a need for establishing a community for researchers was felt. Victor Margolin, drawing from John Chris Jones' writing (Design Methods: Seeds of Human Future, 1981), explains the system as "operating holes of which modern life is being formed and made; traffic systems, computer software, educational programs, hypermarkets, etc. This is the scale of design today.
Next concept he discusses about is 'project-oriented research', while he describes as 'a necessary first step to envisioning design as a more autonomous practice that can occur independently of a market framework'(Victor Margolin 2002, p.249). This technique focus more on the manufacturing on the basis of market demands, consumer satisfaction, quality control, aesthetics etc.
