The particular epistemic and innovative potentials of Design Research are increasingly recognized within the wider academic sphere and are in constantly growing demand by businesses, institutions and politics alike. Yet, design research also is a field and practice that, due to its in-between nature, lacks the clear boundaries and formal dogmatisms of more traditional research disciplines, as well as their implicit notions of secured knowledge and linear progress.
Recognizing this inherent openness as one of its key qualities, the New Experimental Research in Design (in short: NERD) conference aims at providing a genuinely diverse and open platform for discussing, reflecting on and exposing to a wider public the manifold ways in which design’s unique perspective and proficiencies can intelligently be applied as a research competence. It does so by inviting presentations of empirical research projects by researchers from around the world and from all areas of design research with a focus on methodologically and thematically original approaches.
The emphasis on the empirical or the experimental is based on the conviction that the discussion about the merits and possibilities of design research is one that has to be led by example: What constitutes a fruitful method or approach only becomes apparent by it actually being conceptualized, worked out and eventually put into practice. For the same reason, NERD is decidedly not narrowed to a certain topic or school of thought, since the qualitatively new often exceeds such preconceived categories.
Developed and realized by BIRD, the Board of International Research in Design for the eponymous design research book series published by Birkhäuser, as an annual event with changing venues, this conference format has already proven its productivity five times.