Research Title: Towards a comprehensive and universal Design Theory, Design Methods, and possible paradigm shifts
A rapidly changing and increasingly complex world demands a science of design and a comprehensive and universal design theory. With each new emerging design field and the new and ever more complex use of the term design, a theoretical framework and adequate theories for enhancing communication between all participants involved in the design process become increasingly important. As a trans-disciplinary platform, design needs to develop clear terms and concepts, as well as an applied methodology. For a long time, design has been thought of as an applied art; but, currently, it is also understood as a basic modus of human actions, like a language or other media, and as a discipline that creates objects of identification and communication in social systems. If we consider design to be a medium or a production of metaphors for communication, then we can also consider design to be something theoretical that merits further evaluation. The main focus of this research, however, is the discovery and designing of a comprehensive and universal design theory. To achieve this goal, our work will therefore incorporate previously existing theoretical design research, cognitive science research, systems theory, and constructivism, as well as chaos theory and media theory.
Jurgen Faust is currently working at Monterrey TECH as a faculty for Design and Design Theory. Between January 2005 and December 2006he worked as the Dean for Academic Affairs at CEDIM, Monterrey. He also taught design and theory with an emphasis on design processes and the possible transformation into other disciplines. In addition he is a practicing researcher, designer, and artist, who showed in many places, including Museums and Galleries in Europe, Germany, France, England, Italy, Poland and Slovakia as well as the United States. Jurgen Faust has a University Degree in Chemistry as well as in Fine Arts and was the co-founder of a private University in the early eighties. The University of Applied Sciences, Schwaebisch Hall in the suburb of Stuttgart, is one of the rare state accredited private Universities in Germany. For many years he was the Co-director and Dean of New Media at this institution and responsible for many international conferences and symposia. He is also the architect of new programs concerning professional education within the design field as well as digital media art and design. In 1999 Jurgen Faust accepted a position as a Professor at the Cleveland Institute of Art, United States, where he was responsible for the creation of the Technology and Integrated Media Environment. For over 6 years he was the acting chair of this program at CIA. In addition he was the Dean of Integrated Media Environment for four years and responsible for the re-design of curricula in Print Media, Drawing, Illustration, Communication Design as well as Biomedical Communication. Under his leadership T.I.M.E. digital arts and the Integrated Media Environment grew to the biggest environment at CIA. He was also responsible for the design of a new graduate program in Digital Design and Arts and the architect of the Professional Partnership Program, a modified Coop, which gives students a competitive advantage regarding professional experience and financial support from the industry. He was recognized and rewarded with the NEOSA innovation award from the software industry as one of the innovators in North east Ohio. In Cleveland he was also the driving architect and force to integrate a Design Center, the Future Center at the Cleveland Institute of Art. In addition he is one of the acting core researcher of the Managing as Designing movement, contributed and collaborated in many projects and to many books like “Dialogues in the realm of Managing as Designing”, Jurgen Faust and Fred Collopy, Cleveland 2003, or ”Purposes in lieu of goals; enterprises in lieu of things”, in Managing as Designing, Stanford Press 2003, Richard Boland, Fred Collopy. For many decades he is working on a comprehensive theory to describe design processes.