Roles of Design Research During the COVID-19 Pandemic

For the Harvard GSD Design Research Forum’s 2020 colloquium, I share thoughts on five roles that design researchers can serve as the world navigates the #covid19 pandemic. In this audio recording, I discuss how these roles can help generate data, expose bias, synthesize information, clarify truth, forecast new possibilities, and evaluate current processes and systems of power. I also identify a range of U.S. audiences and demographics for which each of these roles might elevate a deeper sense of personal agency due to histories of marginalization and targeted violence.

Quarantined: The role of Design Research in measuring urgency and reimagining agency

In response to the global shift towards social isolation, our Spring 2020 colloquium will adapt to a ‘symposium-as-publication’ to replace the traditional means of conversation of an in-person conference format. We will employ two mediums of exhibition—a virtual gallery accompanied by a student-run print publication— to allow for geographically scattered voices to congregate alongside one another in a diversified composition. 

About Design Research Forum

Design Research Forum (DRF) is a student-run organization formed to highlight design research going on in and around the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Design research is the process of inquiry, ideation, iteration, and illustration that underpins and runs in parallel to the acts of planning, proposing, and implementing design. As such, this work is integral to the work of all students within the GSD but may not always be expressly examined or celebrated. It is in that void that DRF operates, working to facilitate a more complete and nuanced design discourse to the GSD community.