ABSTRACT
In our increasingly complex and extensively designed world, the practice of design must be research-based. Design research is often motivated by the possibility of initiating change in the situations being researched (Crouch and Pearce 2012) and is irresistibly drawn to the question of what the research is for or what it will enable us to do. This motivation to anticipate and create change brings design research closer to other forms of interventionist research such as action research or, more recently, ‘transition theory’ (Fam and Mellick Lopes 2015a; 2015b) as well as offering the more holistic interpretative framework of ‘metadesign’. The latter, defi ned as ‘an emerging framework of practice that will enable designers to change, or create, behavioural paradigms’ (Wood 2016) sees designers engaged at higher levels rather than simply ‘harnessed to increasing consumption’ (Wood 2016).
