Perspectives on Building a Philosophy of Design

Abstract

Building a Philosophy of Design is one of the sections of the Annotated Design Research Bibliography. Design suffers from the ambiguity of its philosophical context. Although design communities attempted to solve this problem a decade ago, there is no agreement concerning what a philosophy of design might be. The study addresses the differences of philosophy in design and science. This is followed by an analysis of the most read books as determined by community ranking. Field-keyword analysis is then used to analyze interdisciplinary books and expert recommendation of books. The results from community ranking demonstrate that books related to philosophy of design still require substantial development since there is a limited literature that directly points to a philosophical context for design. Most current books tend to be design history and criticism of design. From the results it is evident that design requires progressive action to establish a foundation in this area.