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This book has argued that the heart of constructive design research is usually a design experiment; it is a key vehicle of knowledge creation. In this chapter we study design experiments through a fairly recent philosophical debate that has been targeted against the theory-centric view of research. It is called ‘new experimentalism,’ which argues that experiments often create knowledge regardless of theory. Following new experimentalism, the hypothesis we explore in this chapter is that design experiments generate knowledge, but also that there are several kinds of experimental protocols in constructive design research.

This paper examines jewelry as a tangible form of memories. People carry memories of their lost loved ones in their pieces of jewelry, but to do this, they need to attach their intangible memories to the physical forms of jewelry. This paper examines the tangibility of memories in jewelry through American and Finnish women’s stories about their meaningful jewelry. Its theoretical background lies in Durkheim’s and Simmel’s notions about how people use wearable things to communicate parts of themselves to others. It is based on a qualitative analysis of the stories women told me about their meaningful jewelry.

This paper proposes to reshape the discussion design schools about the relationship of design practice to research. Many universities now have very successful design departments that educate high-level design practitioners. But the rapid growth of these departments, popular as they are with students, has meant that there has been very little time to step back and reflect on the nature and development of academic design in its new environment. Consequently, the formation of an academic design practice that can take its rightful place among other academic fields has been slow. In this paper we will propose a model of academic design and critically asses its qualities, as well as the challenges that lie ahead for this new species of academic design practitioner. The model builds on recent work dealing with forms of abduction in design, and on a few papers that describe the development of research programs at Aalto University.