Welcome to Design Thinking, Design Research, and Design Experiments 2025

Description: 

Welcome to our newly developed “Design Thinking, Research, and Experiments” course.

As many academics and professionals within the design field, our relationship to Design

Thinking, Design Research, and Design Experiments has evolved through the years. In this

course, we will discuss and reflect upon selected concepts:

The Evolution of the Design Thinking Concept. 

In this first part of the course, we will take you through the development of the design thinking concept with our reflections along the way. We hope this will help you deepen your understanding of the aspirations, the theoretical underpinnings as well as the recent critique of the design thinking concept. 

We believe it is important for you as PhD students, who have an interest in the concept to understand why, how, and which path had led the Design Thinking concept, to the somewhat disputed position, where it is today.

Epistemic Traditions from within Constructive Design Research. 

In the second part of the course, we work with when we drift, how research insights emerge. We discuss “drifting by intention” and four underlying epistemic traditions from within constructive design research. 

We explore emergence as a feature of practice-based design research, and ask questions on how to understand the knowledge produced: where is its location, what acts create it, how binding it is supposed to be, and ultimately, what drives knowledge creation?

Designing Experiments for Your Research. 

In this third part of the course, we are hands-on with your PhD research project. You will outline the experimental setups in your research. Together we will ideate on hands-on experimental approaches.

This part usually gives insights into the unknown unknowns in your research through parallel prototyping of your research questions, experimental setups, and expected insights.

Organizer: Linda Nhu Laursen

Lecturers: Linda Nhu Laursen

ECTS: 2

Time: 20 - 21 October 2025

Place: Aalborg University

Zip code: 9220

City: Aalborg

Maximal number of participants: 30

Deadline: 29 September 2025