Towards a strategic role for doctoral research in design.

Design has a long history in Italy. Milano, in particular, has a long tradition in the practice of design, a profession dating back of the early years of the century, well based on local crafts and industries. Conversely, national accreditation of the Ph.D. research programmes in design dates back only fifteen years, followed by the awards of degrees (Laurea) in industrial design. It was Milano itself, with the Politecnico, that fostered the creation of Italy’s first Ph.D. programme in industrial design (1990) and the Degree course in industrial Design (1993), exploiting the fruitful dialogue with the long lasting entrepreneurial and management tradition of the small and medium size companies and manufacturers of the local and national industrial system. Therefore, although consolidated in its vocational character, industrial design is just in its infancy as an academic discipline. Nevertheless, education in design - since its beginnings - has been facing the requirements of the demand of design, at both local and enlarged scales. This contribution proposes a reflection on some critical issues deriving from the “search vs. research” transition in design. Assuming that the shift to a disciplined learning on “how to make research in design” has started to produce strategical visions for pitfalls on applied research. To guide and develop this vision some elements are discussed, stemming from the design research experiences developed within the Ph.D. programme in industrial design at Politecnico di Milano. At present this Ph.D. programme partly performs an incubator function, in terms of potential skills to capture key aspects of design research development and to try to manage the complexity of design issues deriving from the technology-society interaction. An emphasis will be proposed on the idea of the Ph.D. programmes as hubs, whose relevance is not (only) linked on a particular area of study, but on the skills to foster research “strategies”, coherent (but not necessarily dependent) with the tacit or explicit factors expressed by some design demand and societal needs.