Towards Actionable Forms of Communicating and Sharing Design Knowledge

Design research aims to construct knowledge that is useful for designers and non-designers in the processes of designing for various types of challenges: from making products to solving complex social problems. Designers and non-designers seek information and inspiration for their work both in a non-design world, e.g., in films, illustrated magazines, and in various sources and forms of design research. Conference papers are one of many sources of design research insights. Unfortunately, the textual format of conference papers does not allow to convey the richness of design research insights and express them in forms that are actionable and available to others, e.g., non-designers. As a result, members of design teams might feel disempowered or do not trust and accept provided design research outputs. Therefore, they do not act upon the provided design research insights and find it challenging to apply them in collaboration. In this paper, we present the actionable palette that consists of nine qualities that act as building blocks of actionable forms of sharing and communicating design knowledge. Using the actionable palette to review design research outputs from 51 pictorials, we identified six forms of capturing design research insights. We characterize these six forms and analyze them in terms of actionability to inspire designers and non-designers to experiment with forms of sharing design research insights and first design ideas based on design research insights. Finally, we provide a set of guidelines to inspire and inform the process of reaching the particular qualities of actionability for design research outputs