ABSTRACT
Design knowledge encompasses the formal, rooted in scientific and disciplinary principles, and the informal, grounded in intuitive and common-sense world understandings. While design plays a crucial role in human–robot interactions (HRI), assessing what we learn from design, what an HRI designerly contribution is, and how knowledge is produced when engaging in design is often challenging. In this chapter, Nazli Cila argues that design’s full potential has yet to be realized in HRI, and she advocates for integrating designerly inquiry into the epistemology of HRI. Her essay addresses and disentangles three dichotomies: research vs. practice, theory vs. instance, and academia vs. industry. Cila provides a compass to uncover the intricate interplay between knowledge generation, application, and dissemination. She argues that we, as HRI researchers, designers, and practitioners, possess the power to mold the future of HRI with newfound richness and depth by wholeheartedly embracing the potential that design holds.
