By practicing design research – research through design – at Design Academy Eindhoven, knowledge is created. This knowledge is acquired both through thinking and through making, which often alternate with one another in rapid iterations. Thinking could include collecting, documenting, mapping, analysing, reflecting, translating and concluding. Making could include crafting objects, organising activities, and designing systems. This means that at Design Academy Eindhoven knowledge is expressed in more than words alone. Things, services, stories and installations, for example, can all be containers of knowledge.
Knowledge can be explicitly articulated, but it can also remain implicit. This so-called tacit knowledge or embodied knowledge (‘knowledge in the hands’) plays an important role in the design field, but for knowledge to be discussed and elaborated on in design research however, it has to be shared. Dissemination of knowledge requires design researchers to document and explicitly reflect on their learning process. As Carol Rodgers states, “Reflection is a meaning-making process that moves a community of learners from one experience into the next with deeper understanding of its relationships with and connections to other experiences and ideas. It is the thread that makes continuity of learning possible.” At DAE we consider this continuity a precondition to knowledge accumulation. With the creation of knowledge, Design Academy Eindhoven not only aims for a better understanding of phenomena, but also for a sharing of insights across boundaries – interdisciplinary boundaries, and also between academia, industry, the public sector and societal groups. As well as the creation of new opportunities for design, DAE’s knowledge creation aims at creating space for alternative frames of reference and the exploration of new futures.