A metaresearch on Engineering Design Research – the case of Empirical Studies

Design research is different from other engineering branches due to a number of aspects such as its relative youth, the involvement of the professionals from different fields and the different theories and methods used by these different disciplines. Also since design research does not have a strong relationship with natural sciences the use of methods and tools inherited in them is not possible. Therefore, it is difficult to define the content of the design research and design approaches, methods and tools used. On the other hand, the community dealing with engineering design research needs a set of directions and standards. The study aims to help the design researchers by proposing a quantitative analysis of the papers contributed to the 2017 and 2019 editions of International Conference on Engineering Design (ICED) which is one of the largest and broadest in the context of design research. By reviewing the ICED papers a categorization study is conducted and four categories are defined based on the study of Cantamessa (2010). These are empirical research, experimental research, development of new tools and implementation studies. The aim of this study is not to provide or test scientific hypothesis but support the debate upon design research methodology with an empirical perspective on some data. Descriptive statistics of the analyzed papers is carried out both upon all of the papers and upon each category defined.