Design Research and Innovation Model Using Layered Clusters of Displaced Prototypes

The ability of design to recognize the wicked problems inside complex systems and find possible ways to modify them has led other disciplines to try to understand the design process and apply it to many areas of knowledge not traditionally associated with design. In addition, design's creative solutions and ability to innovate have made designers a valuable resource in the contemporary economy. Nevertheless, there is still an unnecessarily constraining polemic about the meaning and model of the process of academic research in the field of design, the ways in which design research should be conducted, and the specific knowledge that is produced with the design research process.

This paper tries to broaden the discourse by describing the prototype as a basic element of the process of design, since it is connected to a specific type of knowledge and based on the working skills of the designer; it also proposes a model of the use of prototypes as a research tool based on four different theoretical concepts whose importance in the field of design has been strongly established by different academic communities around the world. These are embodied knowledge, displacement, complexity, and that we learn about the world through transforming it. Pursuing these models, we develop a process to intentionally produce designerly knowledge of complex dynamic systems, using layered clusters of displaced prototypes.