doing a phd in design

Doctoral Program FAQs

Candidates who do not have backgrounds in one of the School of Design's area of focus (Communication Design, Product Design, Interaction Design, UX design, Environments Design, Service Design, Design for Social Innovation, design research, design theory) would not be eligible for Teaching Fellowships. They may, however, be considered for the self-funded PhD option. Additional study, such as the School’s MA, MPS or MDes degree could make such candidates eligible for PhD Teaching Fellowships. Please contact us for advice on this matter.

Yes. Candidates with expertise on housing, interiors and smaller-scale architecture and an interest in Transition Design may apply and help the School build out its offerings in Environments Design.

No. The Human Computer Interaction Institute offers a PhD with pathways in Interaction Design. Consequently, applicants with research topics and approaches that demand significant amounts of coding or more cognitive science based research methods will be encouraged to apply to HCII.

In some cases, 3+ years of high-level professional design experience, demonstrated with a portfolio and a well-formulated research proposal may meet the application requirements.

In some cases, yes. Applicants with backgrounds in Business and Management, but with additional expertise and experience in Design, and who are interested in Transition Design, should apply to this program and will be encouraged to seek faculty advisers from other areas on campus. We would be particularly interested in candidates with business and management expertise related to Transition Design such as circular economies, sustainable design, and B corps.

Carnegie Mellon is a highly ranked research university and there are potential advisors from a wide range of disciplines on the campus. We also have a network of potential advisors who are based in other institutions.

No. The language requirements for application to the program cannot be waived. Please review these carefully.

No. Unfortunately we do not have the ability to review portfolio materials for each inquiry that we receive. To be considered for the program you will need to formally apply.

No. We do not currently offer an online option for our PhD degree. We hope to eventually offer a part time PhD degree but it is not an option at this time.

No. The only funding opportunity available is the Teaching Fellowship which requires students to teach 1-2 courses during the academic year.

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• PhD in Design

The first PhD in design program in the US, Institute of Design’s PhD is a top-rated graduate program for those seeking to teach or conduct fundamental research in the field. Our PhD alumni have gone on to lead noted design programs at universities all over the world and lead practices at global corporations.

By pursuing rigorous research in an area that aligns with work by our PhD faculty, you’ll work directly in some of the most exciting design-focused work being done today. To learn more about research at ID and our PhD in Design, complete this form .

PhD Faculty Advisors

Weslynne ashton.

Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability & Food Systems Action Lab Co-Director

Anijo Mathew

Dean, Professor of Entrepreneurship and Urban Technology, & ID Academy Director

Assistant Professor of Data-Driven Design

Ruth Schmidt

Associate Professor of Behavioral Design

Carlos Teixeira

Charles L. Owen Professor of Systems Design and PhD Program Director

Degree Requirements

All PhD students will work closely with their advisors to plan their course of study and research. Students complete a total of 92 credit hours:

• Up to 32 credits can be transferred from a master’s program
• 12 course credits
• 48 research credits

Courses may be selected from across the university’s course offerings to complement the objectives of the student’s program.

Admitted doctoral students will be required to submit and obtain approval for a program of study. Within two years of being admitted, students take a comprehensive examination, after which, students will be considered candidates for the PhD degree.

The research component of the program grows as the student progresses. The dissertation created from this work is intended to create a substantial and original contribution to design knowledge.

Featured Courses

Phd principles & methods of design research, phd research and thesis, phd philosophical context of design research, student work, future archetypes of ev charging, exploring controlled environment agriculture, partnership with city clerk’s office aims to reform fines and fees, phd corporate partnership initiative.

Designed for professionals who want to reach the next level of design leadership, ID’s PhD Corporate Partnership provides candidates and organizations the tools and techniques needed to grow leadership and innovation within your organization.

Candidates should have a master’s degree in design (or equivalent) and/or significant experience as a professional designer.

A Global Network

Across the entire school, ID alumni make up a strong network—a uniquely skilled set of more than 2,400 people across 32+ countries who deal with difficult issues and navigate them with clarity, purpose, and discipline.

Alumni Hiighlights

Jessica meharry, phd, associate professor, columbia college chicago, id’s phds make their mark, andré nogueira, co-founder and deputy director of the design laboratory at the harvard t.h. chan school of public health, estimated costs.

Tuition and research stipends are extremely limited. Only self-funded applicants will be considered.

Fall 2024 Admission

January 19, 2024 (priority admission) March 1, 2024 (final general admission)

Spring 2025 Admission

October 26, 2024 (final admission)

Request More Info

Request more information.

Please complete the form to request more information or if you have additional questions regarding our application process or requirements.

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Experts in the Field

The College of Design offers two distinct doctoral programs aimed at broadening student knowledge within the design field.

PhD in Design

The PhD in Design is an on-campus program intended for students who seek to deepen their knowledge of both theory and research. The PhD in Design program offers very generous financial support including: tuition, insurance, travel support, and a stipend. All majors, freshmen through doctoral students, have dedicated studio space with 24-hour access. Lab spaces are state-of-the-art, and the College of Design facilities are among the best in the nation.

The Doctor of Design program is a distance education program for established practicing professionals working with creative and case-based research problems who intend to apply the results of their studies to design practice. DDes students conduct original investigations through design-based practices, cases, and methods. The program provides a forum for connecting design research to the needs of society, by promoting the application of new knowledge in design and addressing design impacts on larger systems.

Recent News

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Educator and researcher M. Elen Deming was presented with the Forster Ndubisi Professional Service Award at the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture (CELA) Dinner on March 22, 2024.

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Attention! Deadline for application to 2024 PhD Admissions approaching: 28 March! APPLY NOW

New!!!!! SAGE Fellowships for full-time doctoral applicants. Read in section on SAGE Fellowships .

NID’s doctoral program

In pursuit of its continued commitment to Design research, NID started a doctoral programme in Design in the year 2017. The goal was to take a step further from the practice of Design so well pursued in its Bachelors and Masters programs into the world of advanced and detailed in-depth research study of particular aspects of Design that might hitherto not have been studied. NID’s PhD programme in Design aims to promote deep reflection, inquiry, and rigour in the development and dissemination of new ideas, expressions and skills in the field of Design and allied fields and contribute new theories and knowledge to Design, Design education and Design practice.

A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree in Design is awarded at NID for advanced study of the creation of innovative solutions/  approaches/ methods/ interfaces for products/ communications/ services/ experiences along with an accompanying thesis that extends the body of knowledge of application of design thinking, process, and practice.

The programme is open to educators and professionals in design and allied fields who wish to reinvent their own practice or knowledge base while pushing the boundaries of the discipline through innovation in practice and create new design theories. The PhD programme at NID aims to be a national and international benchmark for doctoral research in design.

With the scholars of the first batch now graduating with their doctoral degrees, the program is drawing more and more applicants for doctoral pursuit in Design.

Practice- vs Theory-led doctoral research in Design

The PhD programme in Design at NID may be undertaken in one of the following modes:

Practice-led Research: Original investigation undertaken in order to gain new knowledge mostly by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. Such research includes practice as an integral part of its method and often falls within the general area of action research outcomes accompanied by substantiated claims of originality and contribution to knowledge. Creative outcomes may be in the form of artefacts such as objects, images, film, fashion, music, Design collections, models, samples, prototypes, digital media, performances and exhibitions or other outcomes. The doctoral submissions for this kind of research must include contextualisation of the creative work.

Theory-led Research: Such research would be concerned with the nature of practice and lead to new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice. The main focus is to advance knowledge about practice, or to advance knowledge within practice.  Such research may be fully described in text form in the doctoral thesis.

Part-time vs Full-time engagement

The PhD programme is allowed to be taken up in part-time or full-time formats.

Residence: Full-time candidates are required to be present on campus throughout the duration of their doctoral study period.

Duration: The maximum duration allowed for a full-time candidate is 3 years, which can be extended upto 5 years upon formal application by the candidate and endorsement by their guide and co-guide.

Eligibility for financial support: Occasionally the Institute might make announcements of financial support if sources make such support available. On such occasions only full-time candidates are eligible to apply for the support.

Attention: SAGE Fellowships for full-time doctoral applicants

Read in section on SAGE Fellowships .

Residence: Part-time candidates are required to be present on campus for the duration of scheduled coursework, seminars, and other academic requirements that are declared to be held in person.

Duration: The maximum duration allowed for a full-time candidate is 5 years, which can be extended upto 7 years upon formal application by the candidate and endorsement by their guide and co-guide.

Employer’s No-Objection Certificate: Working professionals in employment elsewhere and seeking admission to the part-time PhD programme are required to obtain a No-Objection Certificate (NOC) from their employer, stating that the employer has no objection to the employee pursuing a PhD from the Institute, and that the employee will be available in person or online as the Institute may require for doctoral consultations with the guide, for all Institute coursework, periodic seminars and presentations, as the case may be, and will fulfil residential requirements as per the Institute’s requirements. This certificate should be submitted no later than acceptance of offer of admission if made.

Eligibility for financial support: Part-time candidates would NOT be eligible for ANY financial support from the Institute.

Part-time candidates shall also be governed by all rules and regulations of the Institute.

NID-HSLU Cooperation PhD Program

In the year 2022 NID entered into an agreement with Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts—School of Design, Film and Art (HSLU), Switzerland, to offer an NID-HSLU PhD Cooperation program separate from its own PhD program alluded to above, on the theme Eco-Social Innovation by Design . This program is open to people worldwide to apply. A common portal is used for application to both programs. Information on this program is available on the website https://www.hslu.ch/en/lucerne-school-of-art-and-design/research/doctorate/phd-programme-eco-social-innovation-by-design/ .

The SAGE PhD Fellowship

NID is pleased to offer one (1) full-time PhD Fellowship on the topic of Biopackaging through the SAGE PhD Fellows program of Echo Network of Bangalore, a Denmark-based organisation that works with the Nordic Centre of India to promote research on Sustainability. Research proposals are invited for this Fellowship opportunity.

The terms of this Fellowship are as follows:

• This Fellowship would be available for research  only on the   topic of Biopackaging . The research must also relate to the field of Design and thus make a contribution to theoretical knowledge of the two fields (Design and Biopackaging) combined.
• The Fellowship would be available only to  full-time candidates . The candidate would be required to  fulfil   physical attendance requirements at NID's Ahmedabad campus  for the entire duration of their doctoral study.
• The Fellowship would be available for  three (3) years . If more time is required for the research work to be completed, the candidate could apply for it (extending the duration upto a maximum of 5 years) but the duration of funding is limited to 3 years.
• The fellowship would include a stipend for living expenses in Ahmedabad, tuition fees of the PhD program, and all costs (eg, travel, conferences, material) related to the research being conducted. 
• The candidate on this Fellowship is required to  spend up to 7 months in Denmark  (over the three-year Fellowship period) working with Danish institutes associated with Echo Network on this project. The costs of this would be covered in addition to the fellowship.
• Applicants to this Fellowship must clearly  include the following in the title of their research proposals: “Application for SAGE Fellowship”  to indicate their intent of applying for the fellowship. Absence of this phrase in the title would be taken to mean that the applicant does not wish to be considered for the fellowship even if the topic is related to Biopackaging.
• Only  one (1) position is available  for the Fellowship.
• Applicants for the Fellowship would  go through the same Admissions process as that published in the Admissions Handbook  for 2024.
• The candidate who is awarded the Fellowship would be required to  go through all the academic processes of all doctoral students of NID  during their doctoral tenure at the Institute.

Disciplines

The PhD programme in Design will include:

• Original investigation undertaken through a design project, in order to gain new knowledge by means of practice and the outcomes of that practice. Claims of originality and contribution to knowledge may be demonstrated through creative outcomes, which may include artefacts such as objects, images, film, fashion, music, design collections, models, samples, prototypes, digital media or other outcomes such as performances and exhibitions. Doctoral submissions for this kind of research must include a contextualisation of the creative work. A written/video thesis will form a part of the dissertation,which shall be in a dialogic and analytic relation to the outcome, with a suitable articulation of the objective, methods, process and findings.
• The research may also be concerned with the nature of practice and lead to new knowledge that has operational significance for that practice. The main focus of this kind of research shall be to advance knowledge about practice or to advance knowledge within practice. The results of the research, in this case, may be fully described in text form in the doctoral thesis.

The programme shall promote the accumulation and application of diverse research methods that should be customised as per Indian variables and the context of Indian socio-cultural heritage and should be relevant to the needs of the country. The main emphasis of the programme will be the generation of new knowledge through testing and implementing new materials, techniques, processes and design ideas. The programme will nurture design thinking as an inquiry-based field of research and knowledge production that, in turn, inform better design practices.  

The PhD programme in Design aims to promote deep reflection, inquiry, and rigor in the development and dissemination of new ideas, expressions and skills in the field of design and allied fields and shall lead to their meaningful manifestations in the form of new design collections, objects, communication, services, strategies, etc. The work shall contribute new theories and knowledge to design, design education and design practice.

The purpose of the programme is to support the creation of products or services that improve the quality of life of people, meet demands to sustain the environment, improve policymaking; and better the understanding and use of design in industry, education and society at large.

To foster original research and create new knowledge about the nature and practice of design.

To engage in a deeperunderstanding of expressions, methods and the role of design in problem solving activity.

To foster NID’s pedagogic principlesof ‘Learning to Know’and ‘Learning to Do’alongside itscore ideals and culture.

To enable collaboration in research, scholarship, design development and service.

To enable students to engage in advanced research and practice with design theorists and practitioners in a broad varietyof fields.

To contribute towards the Institute’s objective of design for dignity and service to society, and to participate in meaningful design for change and sustainability.

How to Apply

Admission to the PhD programme at NID as well as to the NID-HSLU Cooperation program is conducted annually, through NID’s Admissions portal  https://admissions.nid.edu . The admission process is a multi-stage one consisting of the following steps:

• Submission of application form.  The applicant must fill out the form for PhD Admissions on the link above. If the applicant wishes to apply to both, the PhD programme at NID and the NID-HSLU Cooperation program, separate applications (with different email ids) must be made for the two.

The application process is completed with payment of application fee. Once the payment is made, the information in the application may only be changed in a small Edit Window provided between 29 Mar and 31 Mar on payment of a processing fee.

• Screening of applications on the basis of educational qualification.  The applicant’s qualifications have to abide by the requirements mentioned in Section 5 of the  Admissions Handbook 2024-25 . Deviation from them would be cause for rejection of application.
• Scrutiny of research proposal submitted.  As part of the application, submission of a research proposal is required. The proposals of eligible candidates would be evaluated on criteria mentioned in the Admissions Handbook.

Attention!  Research proposals are especially invited on the topic of Bio-packaging, for which a funding opportunity in the form of the SAGE PhD Fellowship is available. Please read about this in the  section on SAGE Fellowship . This opportunity is available only to applicants to NID’s PhD Program, not to the NID-HSLU Cooperation Program.

• Passing of the Doctoral Research Test (DRT).  This test is required to be taken by all applicants who are less than 15 years from their basic educational qualification.
• Interview.  Candidates who pass the DRT would be interviewed by a selection panel appointed by NID.

The candidates who pass the interview stage would be ranked according to merit and the top 12 would be made offers of admission. All government norms that apply (eg, reservation based on caste and disability) would be followed in the process.

• Schools & departments

Design PhD, MPhil

Awards: PhD, MPhil

Study modes: Part-time, Full-time

Funding opportunities

Programme website: Design

Discovery Day

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Research profile

Design research is part of a dynamic and supportive environment within a vibrant community of world-class research. Design research integrates practice and theory within a dynamic and supportive environment. It connects across disciplines and research initiatives to support doctoral study within a vibrant community of world-class research. The range of subjects possible is vast and includes but is not limited to:

• Design anthropology
• Design history and theory
• Methodological development
• Design informatics
• Design for healthcare and wellbeing
• Design management
• Craft studies
• Service design
• Design for change (transition and transformation)
• Cultural and heritage studies
• Sustainability and the circular economy
• Design Cultures
• Design and Digital Media

You will also be supported through our practice specialisms (in theory or practice) in:

• Film and television
• Graphic design
• Illustration
• Performance costume
• Product design
• Screen studies (film and animation)
• Silversmithing

Programme structure

You can undertake the Design MPhil or PhD programme either as a practice-based programme of research, or theory based. And it is possible to change between approaches during your programme of study.

The PhD programme comprises three years of full-time (six years part-time) research under the supervision of an expert in your chosen research topic within Design. If you study by theory then the period of research culminates in a supervised thesis of up to a maximum of 100,000 words. For the practice-based approach your research would culminate in a portfolio of artefacts or artworks which would be accompanied by a thesis of up to a maximum of 50,000 words.

The MPhil programme comprises two years of full-time (four years part-time) research under the supervision of an expert in your chosen research topic within Design. If you study by theory then the period of research culminates in a supervised thesis of up to a maximum of 60,000 words. For the practice-based approach your research would culminate in a portfolio of artefacts or artworks which should be accompanied by a thesis of up to a maximum of 20,000 words.

Regular individual meetings with your supervisor provide guidance and focus for the course of research you are undertaking.

You will be encouraged to attend research methods courses at the beginning of your research studies.

And for every year you are enrolled on programme you will be required to complete an annual progression review.

Training and support

All of our research students benefit from Edinburgh College of Art's interdisciplinary approach, and you will be assigned at least two research supervisors.

Your first/ lead supervisor would normally be based in the same subject area as your degree programme. Your second supervisor may be from another discipline within Edinburgh College of Art or elsewhere within the University of Edinburgh, according to the expertise required. On occasion more than two supervisors will be assigned, particularly where the degree brings together multiple disciplines.

Our research culture is supported by seminars and public lecture programmes and discussion groups.

Tutoring opportunities will be advertised to the postgraduate research community, which you can apply for should you wish to gain some teaching experience during your studies. But you are not normally advised to undertake tutoring work in the first year of your research studies, while your main focus should be on establishing the direction of your research.

You are encouraged to attend courses at the Institute for Academic Development ( IAD ), where all staff and students at the University of Edinburgh are supported through a range of training opportunities, including:

• short courses in compiling literature reviews
• writing in a second language
• preparing for your viva

The Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities ( SGSAH ) offers further opportunities for development. You will also be encouraged to refer to the Vitae research development framework as you grow into a professional researcher.

You will have access to study space (some of which are 24-hour access), studios and workshops at Edinburgh College of Art’s campus, as well as University wide resources. There are several bookable spaces for the development of exhibitions, workshops or seminars. And you will have access to well-equipped multimedia laboratories, photography and exhibition facilities, shared recording space, access to recording equipment available through Bookit the equipment loan booking system.

You will have access to high quality library facilities. Within the University of Edinburgh, there are three libraries; the Main Library, the ECA library and the Art and Architecture Library. The Centre for Research Collections which holds the University of Edinburgh’s historic collections is also located in the Main Library.

The Talbot Rice Gallery is a public art gallery of the University of Edinburgh and part of Edinburgh College of Art, which is committed to exploring what the University of Edinburgh can contribute to contemporary art practice today and into the future. You will also have access to the extraordinary range and quality of exhibitions and events associated with a leading college of art situated within a world-class research-intensive University.

St Cecilia’s Hall which is Scotland’s oldest purpose-built concert hall also houses the Music Museum which holds one of the most important historic musical instrument collections anywhere in the world.

In addition to the University’s facilities you will also be able to access wider resources within the City of Edinburgh. Including but not limited to; National Library of Scotland, Scottish Studies Library and Digital Archives, City of Edinburgh Libraries, Historic Environment Scotland and the National Trust for Scotland.

You will also benefit from the University of Edinburgh’s extensive range of student support facilities provided, including student societies, accommodation, wellbeing and support services.

PhD by Distance option

The PhD by Distance is available to suitably qualified applicants in all the same areas as our on-campus programmes.

The PhD by Distance allows students who do not wish to commit to basing themselves in Edinburgh to study for a PhD in an ECA subject area from their home country or city.

There is no expectation that students studying for an ECA PhD by Distance study mode should visit Edinburgh during their period of study. However, short term visits for particular activities could be considered on a case-by-case basis.

• For further information on the PhD by Distance, please see the ECA website

Entry requirements

These entry requirements are for the 2024/25 academic year and requirements for future academic years may differ. Entry requirements for the 2025/26 academic year will be published on 1 Oct 2024.

Normally a UK 2:1 honours degree or its international equivalent. If you do not meet the academic entry requirements, we may still consider your application on the basis of relevant professional experience.

You must also submit a research proposal; see How to Apply section for guidance.

If your research is practice-based a portfolio should also be submitted; see How to Apply section for guidance.

International qualifications

Check whether your international qualifications meet our general entry requirements:

• Entry requirements by country
• English language requirements

Regardless of your nationality or country of residence, you must demonstrate a level of English language competency at a level that will enable you to succeed in your studies.

English language tests

We accept the following English language qualifications at the grades specified:

• IELTS Academic: total 7.0 with at least 6.0 in each component. We do not accept IELTS One Skill Retake to meet our English language requirements.
• TOEFL-iBT (including Home Edition): total 100 with at least 20 in each component. We do not accept TOEFL MyBest Score to meet our English language requirements.
• C1 Advanced ( CAE ) / C2 Proficiency ( CPE ): total 185 with at least 169 in each component.
• Trinity ISE : ISE III with passes in all four components.
• PTE Academic: total 70 with at least 59 in each component.

Your English language qualification must be no more than three and a half years old from the start date of the programme you are applying to study, unless you are using IELTS , TOEFL, Trinity ISE or PTE , in which case it must be no more than two years old.

Degrees taught and assessed in English

We also accept an undergraduate or postgraduate degree that has been taught and assessed in English in a majority English speaking country, as defined by UK Visas and Immigration:

• UKVI list of majority English speaking countries

We also accept a degree that has been taught and assessed in English from a university on our list of approved universities in non-majority English speaking countries (non-MESC).

• Approved universities in non-MESC

If you are not a national of a majority English speaking country, then your degree must be no more than five years old* at the beginning of your programme of study. (*Revised 05 March 2024 to extend degree validity to five years.)

Find out more about our language requirements:

Fees and costs

Tuition fees, scholarships and funding, featured funding.

• Edinburgh College of Art scholarships

UK government postgraduate loans

If you live in the UK, you may be able to apply for a postgraduate loan from one of the UK’s governments.

The type and amount of financial support you are eligible for will depend on:

• your programme
• the duration of your studies
• your tuition fee status

Programmes studied on a part-time intermittent basis are not eligible.

• UK government and other external funding

Other funding opportunities

Search for scholarships and funding opportunities:

• Search for funding

Further information

• Edinburgh College of Art Postgraduate Research Team
• Phone: +44 (0)131 651 5741
• Contact: [email protected]
• Postgraduate Research Director, Design, Dr Craig Martin
• Contact: [email protected]
• Edinburgh College of Art Postgraduate Office Student and Academic Support Service
• The University of Edinburgh
• Evolution House, 78 West Port
• Central Campus
• Programme: Design
• School: Edinburgh College of Art
• College: Arts, Humanities & Social Sciences

Select your programme and preferred start date to begin your application.

PhD Design by Distance - 6 Years (Part-time)

Phd design by distance - 3 years (full-time), phd design - 3 years (full-time), phd design - 6 years (part-time), mphil design - 2 years (full-time), mphil design - 4 years (part-time), application deadlines.

If you are applying for funding or will require a visa then we strongly recommend you apply as early as possible. All applications must be received by the deadlines listed above.

• How to apply

You must submit two references with your application.

One of your references must be an academic reference and preferably from your most recent studies.

You should submit a research proposal that outlines your project's aims, context, process and product/outcome. Read the application guidance before you apply. If you wish to undertake research that involves practice then a portfolio will also be required, full details are listed in the application guidance document.

• Preparing your application - postgraduate research degrees (PDF)

Find out more about the general application process for postgraduate programmes:

Imperial College London Imperial College London

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• Postgraduate Research (PhD)

Applying for a PhD in Design Engineering

All applications to the Design Engineering PhD Programme are made online via the Imperial College Application System . Please see below for a step-by-step guide on what you need to do to apply. 

• Check the entry requirements below to ensure you meet the minimum entry criteria for research.
• You need to determine a potential supervisor before submitting an application. Please see  here for our current academic and teaching staff to identify topics of interest and an appropriate supervisor in the department.
• Contact your proposed supervisor to devise and discuss your potential PhD project. You can find their contact email address in their profile on the academic and teaching staff page. 
• Consider how you will fund your PhD - both tuition fees and living costs. You can find information on the College's tuition fees  here , and information on scholarships available  here . Please also consult the 'Funding your PhD page' here for more information. 
• Make your official PhD application via the Application system . Make sure you state your chosen topic and supervisor(s) on the form and details of any department/College funding you may be applying for, as well as attaching all necessary documents. Please note that we do not accept applications that do not detail a proposed supervisor or a research topic. Once submitted, you can monitor the status of your application in the portal. 
• If successful, your proposed supervisor will contact you to arrange an interview. Following the interview, your proposed supervisor will inform you whether they would like to offer you a PhD position and/or nominate you for funding (if appropriate). 

PhD applications can be made all year-round. However, we encourage you to apply as early as possible. Specific application deadlines apply if applicants would like to be considered for certain scholarships. Such deadlines are driven by the funding requirements. Please refer to the application deadlines highlighted on the  Imperial College Scholarship page for full details.

For general information about joining us to do PhD research, please refer to the  online postgraduate prospectus.  

Additional Information for the Application Process

Entrance requirements.

Design Engineering requires higher than the minimum Imperial College entry requirements; our PhD applicants are expected to have a First Class (Distinction) Degree or equivalent at Masters level in a relevant engineering, design or scientific discipline. In exceptional cases where extensive research/industry experience can be demonstrated, candidates with a UK-equivalent of 2:1 (Merit) at Masters level can be considered. 

As part of the application process applicants will need to show that they have met the College’s English-language requirements. Details can be found  here .

Candidates with study up to Bachelors degree level will not normally be considered without evidence of significant industrial, research, or field experience. However, they are welcome to apply for our Master's Degrees,  Innovation Design Engineering  and  Global Innovation Design .

If your undergraduate and/or master's qualifications are from overseas institutions, please see  here for information on international grade equivalencies and how they relate to the Imperial College entry requirements. 

International Applicants

If you are applying to the PhD Programme as an overseas student, there are a number of additional requirements you may need to fulfil as part of the application process: 

• Meeting the College's  English language requirements . 
• Securing a  tier 4 student visa to study in the UK. 
• Most nationals who require immigration permission to be in the UK and intend to study an Engineering PhD will require ATAS clearance. Further information on this is available  here . Please note that nationals from the EU, EEA, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA are NOT required to have ATAS clearance (as of 5th October 2020).  The CAH code used in ATAS applications for Design Engineering is CAH10-01-01.  

Submitting your Application

You should  apply online using the College's application portal. Please keep in mind the following:

• Enter ‘Design Engineering Research’ in the programme title field on the application form
• Start your application as early as possible
• Many studentships have application deadlines well ahead of your planned start date
• Sponsors will be more impressed if you can show you already meet our requirements

As part of the application, you will need to upload the following supporting documents: 

• Degree transcripts 
• 2 references
• Evidence of your English language qualifications (where applicable)
• A short personal statement and/or a research proposal (maximum 1-2 pages)

The main thing to keep in mind is to answer the following questions:  

• What is your motivation to undertake a PhD and why now?  
• Why Imperial and why Design Engineering? Why this particular research team?  
• What is your research question or what is the area you are interested in? What is the need/gap for this research?   

Preparing for Interviews

All applicants must be interviewed before a formal offer of admission can be made. This interview will be conducted by at least 2 members of academic staff; on occasions the Director of Postgraduate Research or the Head of Department may be present. The interview should be carried out in English. 

Normally, interviews are carried out face-to-face. If it is not feasible for the candidate to meet with the potential supervisor – for instance if they are an overseas applicant – candidates may be interviewed by phone or via Teams/Zoom. Due to Covid-19, all interviews are currently being held remotely.   

You are requested to prepare an appox 20-minute (maximum) PowerPoint presentation that should include the following items. 

• Highlights of your CV:  Academic performance, skills, achievements, etc.
• Description of your undergraduate project.
• Description of your MSc project or equivalent.
• Description of any advanced project  (for candidates with industrial experience).
• Highlight skills of particular relevance to your PhD topic.

Funding your PhD

The College has a number of scholarships available for you to apply for. We would recommend you look at the  available scholarships to help you find all available sources of funding. 

The application form will request information on how you plan to fund your PhD, and this will be considered in appraising the strength of your application. Applications to the College's  President's Scholarship Scheme  are made in the PhD application form.  

It is important to consider the deadline dates of scholarship schemes when applying for to the PhD programme. Scholarship applications can take some time, and it is therefore best to apply in good time in order to secure funding. 

IJDesign Vol 2, No 3 (2008)

Table of Contents

Why Do We Need Do...

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Introduction

New Paradigms for Design Practice

What Does the Field Think about Research?

Institutional Thresholds for Doctoral Study

Why Do We Need Doctoral Study in Design?

Meredith Davis

North Carolina State University, North Carolina, USA

This article makes a case for why design research is important to contemporary design practice and the deepening of the design disciplines, especially at this point in our history. It identifies the pressures on knowledge generation exerted by the shift from a mechanical, object-centered paradigm for design practice to one characterized by systems that: evolve and behave organically; transfer control from designers to users or participants; emphasize the importance of community; acknowledge media convergence; and require work by interdisciplinary teams to address the complexity of contemporary problems.

Further, the text addresses the rather checkered past of design research programs in universities in the United States of America (USA), and the international positions by professional design associations on the development of research cultures. Included in this discussion is data on what American design professionals, faculty, and students think about design research and what this data tells us about growing research activity.

Finally, the article talks about the pre-requisite, institutional conditions for establishing and differentiating research-oriented master’s and doctoral degrees. These threshold criteria include: 1) institutional research infrastructure; 2) faculty qualifications to provide curricular leadership in research education; 3) library resources; 4) resources under nascent design research funding models; 5) balance between disciplinary research programs and interdisciplinary challenges; 6) assessment of faculty and student research activity; and 7) research publication and presentation imperatives.

Keywords ─ Doctoral Education, PhD in Design, Design Research, Research Education, Design Knowledge, Design Education.

Relevance to Design Practice ─ There is a general lag by college-level programs in responding to major paradigm shifts in the profession; this article attempts to define the role of advanced programs and research in addressing those shifts in ways not possible under traditional models of professional education.

Citation: Davis, M. (2008). Why do we need doctoral study in design? International Journal of Design, 2 (3), 71-79.

Received October 15, 2008; Accepted December 7, 2008; Published December 31, 2008

Copyright: © 2008 Davis. Copyright for this article is retained by the author, with first publication rights granted to the International Journal of Design. All journal content, except where otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings.

Corresponding Author: [email protected]

Meredith Davis is Director of Graduate Programs in Graphic Design and Head of the interdisciplinary PhD in Design at North Carolina State University, where she teaches on the issues of design and cognition. She is a medalist and fellow of the AIGA, former president of the American Center for Design, former member of the accreditation commission of the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, and grant reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts, US Department of Education, National Science Foundation, and Institute for Museum Services. Her book, Design as a Catalyst for Learning, was awarded the 1999 CHOICE award from the Association of College and Research Libraries and she is currently under contract for a textbook series on design with Thames and Hudson Ltd./UK. Meredith is a member of the AIGA Visionary Design Council, NASAD working group on the future of design education, and Cumulus working group on benchmarking doctoral programs.

Many of the interviews and presentations I do today address the question: why do we need doctoral study in design? This question most often comes from practitioners and faculty in a field that has only a short history of research and a long tradition of training in know-how, in the craft of solving problems with the information immediately at hand. It is a reasonable question to ask about a field that is not well understood by the public or by popular media that view design mostly in terms of how things look. But ironically, the greatest skepticism about expanding design research programs seems to reside within the discipline itself, where there is ongoing debate about what constitutes design knowledge.

By contrast, the notion of a design research culture does not seem odd to people in fields outside design, where among the defining characteristics of professions, as opposed to trades, are segments of practice in which the sole activity is the generation of new knowledge. There is broad recognition that knowledge generation sustains the evolution of a discipline and particular interest in the value of design research in cross-disciplinary investigations.

In this commentary, therefore, I first make a case for why design research is important to contemporary design practice and the deepening of the design disciplines, especially at this point in our history. Further, I address the trajectory of design research programs in universities and talk about the pre-requisite conditions for establishing research degrees.

This paper is from the perspective of design in the United States of America (USA), where design research has been especially slow to develop. Discussions of these issues pervade the field worldwide, however, and several working groups have been established to debate these very topics for publication in the coming year.

The modern practice of design has been the model for design education since the days of the Bauhaus. Defined as an object-centered process, the traditional goal of design has been to produce an artifact or environment that solves a problem. For academic programs arising from the arts, the beauty and humanity of such objects or environments are important. For programs arising from the sciences and engineering, usability and efficiency are paramount. And in between are the social sciences, where the issues of culture and social interaction reside.

The distinctions within each of these disciplines are not simplistic, but the research paradigms they represent for producing objects and environments clearly have different value systems and methods, and historically, they have argued for very different curricular paths at the graduate level.

The demands on design practice in the twenty-first century, however, are significantly different from those of the past, suggesting that these paradigms may require re-examination. A number of current trends challenge the traditional notions of what we do and, more importantly what we need to know:

Increasing complexity in the nature of design problems:

Christopher Jones (1970) articulates the scale of design problems which exist in a post-industrial society. He described a hierarchy of design problems, beginning with components and products and extending to systems of interrelated products and communities composed of interacting systems. Jones asserted that the problems of contemporary society are defined at the level of systems and communities; that design action must address an intricate web of connections among people, activities, objects, and settings. He admonished the design professions arguing that our conventional methods for addressing problems are woefully inadequate at these levels of complexity and better suited to work on components and products.

The chart in Figure 1 shows various problem types, ranging from simple to complex and from artifacts to experiences. The evolution of design practice evidences increasing complexity and greater focus on experience and behavior. We now understand that logos do not mean much if they are not nested within a branding strategy and that software systems succeed or fail on how well suited they are to the broader role of technology and the networked economy in people’s lives. This does not mean that work at the experience end of the continuum is devoid of artifacts only that its goal is to engage or mediate some kind of human interaction with a larger context.

Figure 1. The shift from designing artifacts to designing the conditions for experience.

As an explanation of this trajectory I compare two presentations of a design problem with respect to their complexity and experience. These presentations were made by graphic designer Milton Glaser and technologist Nicholas Negroponte. These presenters shared the stage at a conference of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (2005). First, Glaser unveiled a poster for ONE.org, showing a human hand, with each finger in a different skin tone, and the phrase “We are all African.” ONE.org is a website that encourages people to lobby politicians on the problems of poverty. Second, Negroponte showed MIT’s $100 laptop ( http://laptop.media.mit.edu/laptop/ ), designed to bring the educational opportunities of the Internet to children in developing countries. Both objects addressed the issues of poverty, but Glaser’s poster reduced an enormously complex, systems-level problem to a phrase and an emotional image distributed on the streets of New York City. Negroponte’s solution, on the other hand, addressed the complexity of poverty as something to be managed – not simplified – through tools and systems.

More recently, in an article for Interactions , design strategist Hugh Dubberly (2008) made a similar argument saying that traditional notions of design thinking and the innovation process are object-centered and organize our work according to mechanical principles. He described an organic, systems-based alternative that seeks to address friction in the relationships among communities, conventions, and contexts. The results of Dubberly’s process are insight and opportunities for change that create value and that may take the form of experiences, extendable platforms, or evolving systems. Unlike the final state of an object-centered process, which seeks to be “almost perfect”, the results of a systems-based approach are “good enough for now,” acknowledging that conditions will continue to evolve (Dubberly, 2008).

This paradigm shift in the focus of the design process from objects to experiences demands new knowledge and methods to inform decision-making. It broadens the scope of investigation beyond people’s immediate interactions with artifacts and includes the influence of design within larger and more complex social, cultural, physical, economic, and technological systems.

The transfer of control from designers to participants:

Computer scientist Gerhard Fischer (2002) writes that as the influence of technology expands, control moves from the designer to the people for whom we design. Design researcher Liz Sanders (2006) argues that designers need to think less about consumers and users, and more about participants and co-creators ; about designing with people rather than for them. MIT comparative media professor Henry Jenkins (2006) discusses the consequences of media convergence on people’s sense of agency or control of outcomes. Spend a little time on facebook, SecondLife, or ebay and you understand who is in charge.

Design is in uncharted territory with respect to emergent systems and many of the current strategies for studying people are neither predictive of, nor responsive to, a rapidly changing environment of new technology and the resulting relationships among people, places, and things. If we accept the position of activity theorists (Nardi & Kapetlinin, 2006) – that design mediates the relationships between people and the activities they use to influence or interact with their environment – then our research strategies have to go beyond testing actions and operations in human factors labs and asking questions in focus groups that separate people from the settings in which relevant behavior takes place.

The rising importance of community:

Design anthropologist Elizabeth (Dori) Tunstall (2008) talks about the role of community in design: that historical consciousness (people’s understanding of where they come from); life goals (what matters most to members of a community); organizational structure (how collective decisions are made and how individuals fit in); relationships (the means through which people gain understanding of common values and establish trust); and agency (the degree of an individual’s control or influence over things that matter to the community) are important factors in determining the level of communitas. In this sense, we can talk about learning communities and communities of practice that may exist only through online interactions. Further, such perspectives signal that globalization and the complicated issues of designing for and within culture involve more than simply adopting an appropriate visual language.

If design both illustrates the axiology of a culture (i.e. mirrors its highest or most dominant values) and shapes its social interaction (i.e. influences interpretive perspectives and behaviors), then the consequences of design have implications that reach far beyond the immediate consumption of goods, information, and services. And because “community” is no longer defined by geographic location, or even common histories, our understanding of these issues should be re-evaluated through research.

Technological expansion and media convergence:

We now live in a culture of emergent, convergent, sensor, and mobile technology. Traditional object-driven design paradigms, which often result in fixed features and physical attributes, fall short in an experience-oriented world. Networks, tools, platforms, and systems – the means through which people create experience and shape behavior – are the “products” of design efforts in a vastly reconfigured technological world. Design consultant Adam Greenfield (2006) describes ubiquitous computing as “everyware”, “the colonization of everyday life by information technology…a situation…in which information processing dissolves into behavior” (p. 33).

Not only does this shift in the output of design challenge the traditional body of knowledge that informs our design decisions, but it also points to a need for research into the very methods by which we design. If the goal of design is to provide an increasingly invisible interface (which may, for example, be comprised of sensors that are activated only by unconscious gestures), what methods replace a design process that has been all about designing visible representations of mechanical and text-based information systems? And by what criteria do we judge success?

The necessity of interdisciplinary work:

The complex scale of problems, diversity of settings and participants, and demand for adaptable and adaptive technological systems argues for work being done by interdisciplinary teams composed of experts with very different modes of inquiry. How such experts collaborate as peers and the roles design can play in mediating collaboration present new opportunities for designers.

To participate at this level of engagement, therefore, designers must deploy team-based strategies that argue successfully for effectiveness as well as efficiency, sustainability as well as feasibility, and human-centeredness as well as technical viability. Nothing about design education in the past explicitly prepared designers for teamwork; most design professionals do it intuitively. How teams of diverse experts innovate and the role designers play in that innovation, although the subject of many claims in the popular press, is another area about which there is little empirical research.

It is apparent from these challenges that the traditional knowledge base of design has its limits and that for design practice to remain relevant in this rapidly changing environment, the field must generate new knowledge and methods. Because design is subject to modulations in the culture, such knowledge seeking must anticipate where design is going, not focus only on where it has been.

Further, unlike research in other fields, where the first years of doctoral study are spent surveying what has not been done, the question for doctoral students in design is “What is worth doing?” The choices doctoral students and their faculty make in determining dissertation topics have somewhat greater significance in shaping others’ perceptions of design research than do topics in more mature research fields. These topics tell professionals, scholars, and the public what issues truly matter with respect to design and set the stage for the kinds of students who will be attracted to advanced study. When there is so little history of design research to cite, the collection of dissertation topics in graduate programs around the world are indicators of priorities in the field.

In September 2005, Metropolis published a survey of 1051 designers, design faculty, and students in a variety of design disciplines on the issue of research (Manfra, 2005). Admittedly, the survey respondents had varying levels of research understanding and represented only a small portion of the field. But in all of its confusion, this survey still captures some of the challenges facing research professionals.

The first finding was that there is no general consensus about what is meant by the term “research.”

Respondents’ ideas ranged from deep investigations of users to selecting color swatches. This equivocation is exacerbated by the association of research with library information retrieval in most undergraduate design programs; ambiguity regarding the meaning of degree titles around the world; and the politics of tenure and promotion in colleges and universities, especially in the USA.

Few undergraduate design students, especially those in single-discipline colleges of art in the USA, engage in original, disciplined inquiry intended to inform design decisions, nor do most learn how to read and apply research findings from other fields. Starting with first-year foundation courses, undergraduate curricula generally infer that the way to begin work on a design problem is by drawing, that solutions reside in an abstract visual language, and that reading and writing belong primarily to the domains of history and criticism. General education is usually proximate to but not integrated with design study and depends entirely on the resources and general requirements of the institution. Design faculty rarely make explicit use of content and skills acquired from outside the design curriculum, except to “pour it into formats” as the hypothetical subject matter for design projects. There is often little in the faculty’s own educational backgrounds to encourage a deep understanding of how the social sciences can inform an understanding of audience and context.

A small portion of American undergraduate design students eventually enroll in master’s programs, where the dominant educational model – borrowed from the studio arts – addresses the refinement of practice-oriented skills and portfolios. The tiny number of students who make it to doctoral programs, therefore, frequently must start from scratch in developing any operational understanding of what constitutes research. In the USA, Ph.D. programs spend a significant amount of time explaining to prospective applicants, especially those for whom R&D means the next product feature or styling iteration, that curricula do not include studio courses.

Practice-based Ph.D. programs are not common in the USA, where all four of the doctoral programs offering admission to graphic and industrial designers reside in research universities and focus on empirical research. In some cases, professional master’s degree programs in American colleges and universities carve out practice-based research agendas in which demonstration projects take on theoretical or methodological perspectives, but the goal of these programs is not to produce new knowledge. Rather, they speculate on the practice-based consequences of adopting certain theories about design or they illustrate how such viewpoints may be applied in specific contexts. In the USA, the practice-based agenda is generally reflected in professional doctorates (Doctor of Arts, Doctor of Architecture, Doctor of Design, etc.), but there is debate about what these degrees really do to advance practice that is not already achieved under the professional master’s degree or by very accomplished practitioners. Given that tuition in some American schools is nearly $40,000 per year, the actual benefit of these degrees to someone’s career is a topic of discussion.

Further complicating the definition of research is the reward system for design faculty in many American universities. In an effort to establish credibility for art and design programs within academic research settings and to achieve tenure and promotion, college-level faculty have described an array of activities under the term “research.” Freelance design practice, writing for popular design magazines, expressive investigations in the arts, and supervision of student projects with industry frequently appear in faculty vitae as “research” contributions. While these activities may merit tenure and promotion consideration, they usually do not contribute to the body of knowledge in the field, nor are they routinely subjected to the rigorous criteria for scholarship found in the sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Few bring resources to the institution, and when faculty receive funding for proposed projects it is frequently through internal sources, such as professional development grants for new employees. This dilution of the traditional concept of university research stunts American efforts to launch a research culture in design and distracts faculty from the hard work necessary to move a discipline forward. Design faculty, therefore, spend much of their time making the case that they are special rather than integral to the overall research mission of the university.

In some institutions, however, there are more mature research cultures and faculty routinely apply for government and foundation grants. In these cases, tenure, promotion, and merit pay may depend on the submission of proposals and the frequency with which faculty are listed as principal investigators. It is not uncommon for such schools to have dedicated research space and support staff. The challenge in these settings is to integrate research activities with the other academic work of the college; to avoid a bifurcated faculty in which research is viewed as the opposite of creative practice.

Ernest Boyer (1990), the late president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, provided another definition of scholarship in the academy under a 1990 study titled, “Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate” (pp. 16-21). Boyer identified four areas of faculty scholarship: 1) the scholarship of discovery , which is consistent with traditional definitions of research as knowledge generation; 2) the scholarship of integration, which encourages multidisciplinary work that “is serious, disciplined work that seeks to interpret, draw together, and bring new insight to bear on original research” (p. 19); 3) the scholarship of application, which addresses how knowledge can be responsibly applied to consequential problems; and 4) the scholarship of teaching, in which teaching is not seen merely as the execution of instruction, but as an activity involving particular knowledge, reflection, and review as a subject in its own right. Boyer’s classifications imply that faculty may conduct research in any of these areas, but that work in each category is accountable to rigorous standards of quality and peer review within that paradigm.

More recently there have been attempts by professional design associations to benchmark research practices through policy statements. The Australian Institute of Architects, for example, published a research policy in March 2004. Its definition of research describes a “systematic inquiry for new knowledge” and the implementation of “credible and systematic modes of inquiry… [documentation of] findings in a form that is publicly verifiable and open to peer appraisal” (p. 2).

The Design Research Society’s website ( http://www.designresearchsociety.org/ ) states its domain as “ranging from the expressive arts to engineering” and declares one of its three primary interests as “recognizing design as a creative act.” The Asian design research societies, such as the Japanese Society for the Science of Design ( http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/ ) and the Korean Society for Design Science ( http://www.design-science.or.kr/ ), appear to have broad research missions, with some special interest categories strongly encouraging empirical research. Cumulus, an international consortium of approximately 125 schools of art and design, has formed a working group to author guidelines for establishing research programs; the group will distribute a survey this coming year to determine current practices.

While 81% of professionals polled in the Metropolis survey claim to engage regularly in research and 69% of university department chairs say it is a required and integral part of the curriculum, fewer than 70% of professional respondents say they include students in research that is important to their practices (Manfra, 2005).

Consequently, there appears to be no professional infrastructure in the USA for placing students in positions as research assistants in the field, unlike in the sciences, and few links between curricular expectations and the kind of help professionals need in carrying out their research activities. And because there is no unified theory of design, the basis for encouraging a particular research skill set in undergraduate or master’s programs is contested among institutions and across the design disciplines.

There is a history of sponsored projects in American schools, focused primarily in institutions that have high records of graduate placement in practice. While these projects frequently boast a “think tank” approach to a problem posed by business or industry, they often come with patent and copyright entanglements, either from the company or the institution. Such problems often discourage implementation of student ideas in real settings. Therefore, it is unclear what companies actually gain from these projects in a research sense. Most typically, students bring fresh ideas to the invention of form, use of materials, or understanding of process, but it is not apparent whether companies see the benefits of such activity as significant to their businesses, as a recruitment strategy for future employees, or as a philanthropic gesture. The Metropolis study would suggest that, for the most part, student researchers are not considered part of a larger business plan.

It is obvious in many institutions, however, that the primary career goal for doctoral students is framed by the curriculum as teaching at the college level. A 2000 conference at the University of Washington, titled Re-envisioning the Ph.D. , recommended that doctoral students be provided with a wide variety of career options, not just teaching, and that “departments need to take responsibility for student access to [research] internships and provide visits from professionals outside the University who will share their professional career journeys with students” (Nyquist & Wulff, 2000). Apparently, this practice has yet to be adopted widely by doctoral programs in design, despite the presence of design research firms.

When asked which areas of design are among the highest priorities for research, most respondents (80%+) identified sustainability as a top issue (Manfra, 2005).

Yet these same respondents ranked systems theory at the bottom of the list. It is not clear how people can conduct sustainability research without a deep knowledge of systems or how the shift from designing objects to designing systems and tools will flourish if not grounded in such theory.

History and criticism also ranked high in the Metropolis poll, attesting to the growth of scholarship in these areas over the last two decades. Clearly, the history/criticism model is one many designers are accustomed to when thinking of design research and there is organizational infrastructure (e.g. Design Studies Forum) to support faculty and student exchange on these topics. There is, however, no evidence that design practice makes use of such research, so its contribution appears to be mostly at the level of the discipline.

The professional associations in the USA have been silent on the matter of research topics, while generally lending moral support to original investigations but not building conference sessions or publications around specific issues of knowledge generation.

Complicating matters is the absence of a dependable research database to support the design fields.

Existing search engines and library catalogs often fail to recognize design-sensitive terms (i.e. a search under “branding” often yields books on “cattle”) and too few research practitioners are willing to share findings. 22% of practitioners responding to the Metropolis survey said that research outcomes never leave their offices, while 29% present them only at conferences, where proceedings may or may not be available following sessions (Manfra, 2005, p. 132-135). Statistics show that much of the research produced in design offices is considered proprietary, until findings are so old as to no longer be relevant to current practice. And because there are few doctoral programs in design that produce published dissertations, most practitioners appear not to consult universities for original research and relevant literature that may support design practice.

Only 17% of university faculty responding to the Metropolis survey said they publish in books, and many of these may be in the areas of criticism and history, not investigations that inform practice directly. Only 4% disseminate research findings online (Manfra, 2005, p. 132-135).

A project at North Carolina State University took on the task of developing a “proof of concept” for a design research database, recommending that a curated portal to dissertations, conference proceedings, and published literature be established under the American Institute of Graphic Arts in New York City. With the support of AIGA, graduate students advocated standardizing formats for thesis and dissertation abstracts and bibliographies and placing preliminary screening of accessible sources and literature in the hands of institutions and researchers with expertise in particular content areas. The proposed system makes visible the debate over keywords and critical frameworks, acknowledging that an emerging research culture must negotiate both its lexicon and research paradigms. Similar discussions have taken place among members of the Design Research Society.

If these complicated issues could be addressed by the availability of master’s programs, it seems the field would have done so by now. Master’s study in design in many countries has at least a 60-year history, although much of it is configured to serve day-to-day practice, not to build theory and knowledge that can be generalized to many projects.

In the USA, the two-year MFA is the “terminal” degree, granting holders many of the same privileges as the Ph.D. in other fields. Some schools offer the MDes and MS as alternatives, but the one-year MA is designated as an “initial” master’s degree by the accrediting body (National Association of Schools of Art and Design) and does not meet tenure qualifications in many American universities. In some cases, particularly in design history, the MA serves as the bridge to the Ph.D.

Very few American students advance to doctoral study. For students in the areas of graphic and industrial design, there are only four Ph.D. programs in the USA. Doctoral study in architecture and landscape architecture has a longer history, but a doctoral degree is not required to teach in these disciplines in American universities.

There is confusion, therefore, regarding what constitutes research and how someone might prepare to participate in an emerging research culture. Further, despite increasing interest in offering doctoral study, schools have few guidelines about how to go about building advanced programs.

The resources for supporting doctoral education are considerable and the decision to offer doctoral study involves significant commitments, both financial and intellectual. In the USA, the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (2005) classifies universities as doctorate granting on the basis of the following:

• Level of research activity (i.e. R&D expenditures; research staff; doctoral conferrals)
• Confirmation that the institution awarded at least 20 doctorates in 2003-2004

Under previous Carnegie Foundation categories, the level of federal funding (at least $40 million) and a full range of baccalaureate offerings distinguished research-extensive universities from other kinds of institutions. This definition of research universities guides standards within American institutions for how doctoral programs develop and operate. It also presents particular challenges for design.

Financial support for design programs is limited and a model for research funding in design is nascent.

Low teaching loads and high levels of research responsibility generally characterize research faculty in American institutions where research and doctoral programs are high priorities. Such faculty often fund all or a sizable portion of their own and graduate student salaries from sources outside the university. Indirect costs and university overhead can comprise 50% or more of a funding application, making only high-dollar grants capable of supporting doctoral students, who generally expect assistantships and tuition waivers as part of their graduate support plan. At the same time, agencies with sizable grant opportunities, such as the National Science Foundation or National Institutes of Health, typically require principal investigators to hold Ph.D.s. This often means design researchers with the professional master’s degree must piggyback on the applications of their more credentialed colleagues in interdisciplinary investigations.

Because sources for design funding have yet to be developed at levels more typical of the sciences and social sciences, and because design faculty generally have high teaching contact hours per credit in studio-based programs, the time available for doctoral student supervision and the development of research grants is very limited. In American universities, the commitment of a faculty member to an incoming doctoral student involves a close discussion, research, and authoring relationship built through many hours each week over several years, as well as dedication to keeping up with the student’s specific content. It is not unusual for faculty’s weekly contact hours with a single doctoral student to exceed those of the typical lecture class.

Therefore, to get doctoral programs off the ground in the USA with the intention that they become self-sustaining through research grants, the institution must carry faculty and students financially for a period of time until external resources are secured. Once the faculty member has developed funding, it is typical for him or her to buy release time from other curricular instruction, placing the responsibility for replacement hiring on the department.

The faculty who are qualified to provide doctoral education are not necessarily those who are skilled at teaching design studios.

While building a research culture, it is often difficult to find appropriately credentialed faculty (i.e. faculty who hold the Ph.D.). The practice in the USA has been for institutions to worry less about degrees and to look for faculty with deep research histories, however, some experience in doctoral study is necessary to establish policies, protocols, and standards of evaluation. All four American Ph.D. programs employ faculty with research degrees, some from outside the design disciplines and, as they graduate Ph.D. students, there is every expectation that new hires for doctoral supervision will hold Ph.D. degrees.

As an administrator of a Ph.D. program, I quickly learned to separate faculty with interest in an applicant’s proposed topic from those with research expertise in the area. It is important that faculty be better read in the topic than the doctoral student and active in research projects that engage students in robust investigations as assistants. Faculty need to know how to manage a research project and to maintain its momentum through periods of low funding or competing demands. This argues for specific criteria in hiring and affiliating faculty with a Ph.D. program and in determining the match between an applicant and a faculty mentor.

However, such requirements often work against engaging studio faculty in research education and limit the teaching resources for developing doctoral programs. American design departments with bachelor’s and master’s programs typically search for generalists who can teach professional studios while maintaining their own research interests. Because design education is often under-funded and under-staffed, such programs rarely have the luxury to hire research specialists, thereby limiting their ability to support doctoral students and sometimes creating a bias against doctoral study in studio faculty who see advanced programs as siphoning faculty and assistantship resources from the more populated professional programs.

Access to university faculty in other disciplines provides a real advantage when building the student’s network of support for dissertation work. Because design has broadened its scope under new practices, research topics often blur the boundaries between design and other fields. It is unreasonable to expect design faculty to provide all the expertise necessary for such investigations and coursework in the methods of other disciplines frequently grounds design investigations in protocols common to rigorous research in general. In this sense, the potential for doctoral programs residing in a university context have distinct advantages over single-discipline art and design schools.

The library resources of the university must be deep and matched to the research emphasis of the program.

Today it is tempting for an American institution to describe its library resources in terms of its access to inter-library loans. But this means of providing reference material does not support the browsing and preliminary reviews of literature in which doctoral students need to engage. Therefore, sufficient depth in library holdings is essential for doctoral research and the institution should have some standing among research libraries.

Further, the availability of library reference experts is critical to finding the kinds of resources and developing the search skills that doctoral students require. A good research library will be familiar with indices and databases, as well as protocols for accessing archives and special collections that may serve as primary source material for research. Many offer training in research-compatible software and provide consultation on the fair use of intellectual property.

The institution must have some research infrastructure.

American institutions usually satisfy this requirement by establishing a research office under an administrator who participates at the highest levels of university management. Typically, this office also includes grants and contracts staff who approve, monitor, and track funded research projects; a legal advisor who manages intellectual property issues; and someone in graduate programs who develops fellowship and post-doctoral opportunities for students. Frequently, there is also a system for supporting visiting scholars and research faculty from other countries who enhance research discussions during short-term participation on campus.

In most cases, American universities coordinate policies and approvals for doctoral students from a central office, usually in an institutional graduate school; the basic requirements of preliminary qualifying examinations, oral defenses, and submission of dissertations are usually common to all programs.

Generally, design students and faculty have high motives in undertaking research, however, in doctoral work the bar for ethical behavior is set high enough to require more than good intent. In the USA, the Research Act of 1974 defined the Institutional Review Board , an ethics committee that monitors research with human subjects. Developed in response to several high profile research abuse cases in the middle of the twentieth century, IRBs are regulated by the Office for Human Research Protection and may be for-profit entities hired by the institution or committees at the university. Each institution is responsible for establishing a board that reviews proposed studies for the ethical and safe treatment of human subjects and periodically assesses the research practices of the institution. It is typical for American doctoral students in design to learn about IRB procedures in a research methods class and to gain approval and informed consent for any research that involves university students or external audiences for design.

Canada offers an interesting supplement to institutional infrastructure. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation is an independent corporation funded by the government to support research infrastructure (i.e. buildings, labs, and databases) in Canadian universities. Created in 1997, CFI normally funds as much as 40% of project infrastructure costs in partnerships with institutions and their other funding sources. The total capital investment in university research is expected to exceed $11 billion by 2010 (Canada Foundation for Innovation, n.d.). With the goal of maximizing the use of resources in Canadian institutions, a recent review of proposals favored design collaborations in which universities partnered. While this process encourages participation by a number of architecture programs in the country, few of the nation’s graphic and industrial design programs are in universities and reside, instead, in colleges of art and design.

Programs should balance the disciplinary doctorate with a variety of interdisciplinary challenges.

This recommendation from “Re-envisioning the Ph.D.” (Nyquist, & Wulff, 2000), National Studies on Doctoral Education is especially relevant to design, in which the body of knowledge is inherently interdisciplinary and well suited to collaboration with psychology, anthropology, sociology, computer science, engineering, art history, communication and media studies, and a number of other fields. The advice is also testimony to how new research disciplines tend to form. Humanities professor Julie Thompson Klein (1990) argues that a restructuring of knowledge in the twentieth century produced hybrid fields and a “variety of ‘unified’, ‘holistic’ perspectives that have created pressures upon traditional divisions of knowledge” (p. 11). Nowhere is such hybridity more evident than in design, especially under emerging paradigms of practice (i.e. service design, experience design, interaction design, etc.) that are likely to define work in the twenty-first century.

Even within the design disciplines, it is increasing difficult to define content boundaries for research. Where do the physical interface end and the graphic interface begin in today’s computing environments? Where do sustainable technologies reside – in the built or natural environments? And which design discipline can rightfully claim visualization and information systems?

The history of my own program at North Carolina State University is an example of such pressures on the conventional compartmentalization of knowledge as curriculum. Originally a Ph.D. program with two tracks, one in community design (a collaboration between architecture and landscape architecture faculty), and one in information design (a collaboration between graphic and industrial design faculty), it became clear that students had little interest in the traditional disciplinary boundaries. Applicants frequently framed their research interests in areas that fell between the cracks of professional disciplinary divisions. Four years ago we re-organized the program around areas of design influence (health and well-being, learning, sustainability, urban context, technology, history/criticism) and found more expansive opportunities for faculty collaboration, within design and across the university, and more interesting student applicants for the program. We also opened new partnerships with other colleges within the university and with institutions elsewhere in our university system (e.g. in building energy and healthy built environments) that would not have been possible under traditional content designations, thus improving our funding potential and access to research faculty.

National recommendations also argue that doctoral students should have multiple mentors who work under a common set of written guidelines (Nyquist & Wulff, 2000). This recommendation creates some challenges for single-discipline art and design schools, where a limited offering of liberal arts courses usually supports undergraduate education. Universities have greater potential for such collaborations; however, there are obstacles to overcome. How do institutions account for faculty teaching loads and student enrollment in coursework that straddles fields? How do interdisciplinary programs compete for funding in the discipline-driven department structure of a university? Who provides oversight? How is interdisciplinary work acknowledged in a tenure and promotion process that usually includes review by disciplinary peers? And how do students in interdisciplinary programs position themselves for teaching within discipline-defined departments upon graduation?

In many cases, interdisciplinary graduate study grows out of the research collaborations of individual faculty. It is not uncommon in American research universities, for example, for interdisciplinary academic programs to arise from research projects; two or more faculty collaborate across disciplines and then build coursework to feed the growing demand for student research assistance. Students are recruited to these programs specifically to work on targeted projects. The consequence of such targeted programs is that, when funding or faculty interest wanes, or when the collaboration gains greater traction within a more established discipline, the interdisciplinary efforts diminish.

Programs should participate in ongoing assessment, including regular review by external research experts.

Healthy programs engage in rigorous assessment strategies to ensure that programs meet an institutional and national threshold for research practices. It is common for a university assessment office or graduate school to ask for periodic external reviews of research and doctoral programs, in addition to the normal disciplinary accreditation review cycles.

National accreditation reviews in design, however, present challenges to an emerging research culture. The National Association of Schools of Art and Design, the accrediting body in the USA for programs in graphic, industrial, and interior design, has no history of evaluating doctoral programs in design. Its standards address two research disciplines: art education and art history. And its reviewers include no faculty or administrators with Ph.D.s in design. At a recent annual meeting, the organization’s membership discussed the merits of building doctoral programs in art and design. Clearly confused about the reasons for engaging in advanced study, many advocates cited “gaining credibility among colleagues in the sciences” as a primary reason for exploring the opportunity to establish programs. Others made the case that there were easier ways to achieve status than launching a doctoral degree program. It was apparent, however, that the designers within the organization had a more rigorous definition of research, deeper experience in securing external funding, and more measured opinions regarding the task of building a research culture than did the fine artists. In architecture, the National Architectural Accrediting Board is responsible for assessing programs, but its purview is limited to the professional Doctor of Architecture, Master of Architecture, and Bachelor of Architecture degrees.

Therefore, there is little assessment leadership within the design disciplines for the few American research programs. More frequently, programs rely on faculty from comparable research programs at other institutions and are observed by an on-campus, non-disciplinary representative of the graduate school or research office. Some programs import reviewers from abroad in an effort to bolster disciplinary expertise.

Doctoral students should be encouraged to present at conferences, submit papers for publication, and compete for fellowships.

Among the indicators of program success is the ability of doctoral students to compete for presentation and publication opportunities with other students and faculty. This means the institution must encourage and financially support student participation in research conferences and dissertation competitions. It is often necessary to mentor the student in research writing and speaking throughout his or her academic enrollment, especially when the student is working in a second language. American schools may offer writing clinics and ESL courses for general support across the curriculum, but design faculty must take special interest in furthering the student’s development as a presenter and guide the selection of appropriate conference or publication venues. Many students begin by co-authoring with their faculty mentors and submitting posters and papers to internal university symposia. It is the role of college administrators to ensure that all doctoral students are notified of conferences and calls for papers.

National and international fellowships present opportunities for students to fund doctoral research. It may be the job of the research office to generate lists and application materials for such fellowships, but faculty should guide students in conducting their own searches for research funding. Some schools offer grantsmanship training for Ph.D. students and faculty, making use of the institution’s research office as well as outside experts.

Growing research and research programs in design, therefore, is a necessary but complicated task. It is obvious that the proprietary behavior of design practitioners will not make new knowledge widely available and that universities must take on the roles of knowledge generation and dissemination. At the same time, it is also clear that development in this area will be slow without broader recognition that research matters to the future of the design professions and that the outcomes of design decisions have consequences in society.

• Australian Institute of Architects. (2008). Research policy . Retrieved May 15, 2008, from the Australian Institute of Architects Web site: http://www.architecture.com.au/i-cms?page=542
• Boyer, E. L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate . Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
• Canada Foundation for Innovation . (n.d.). Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canada_Foundation_for_Innovation
• Dubberly, H. (2008). Toward a model of innovation. Interactions , 15 (1), pp. 28-36.
• Fisher, G. (2002). Beyond couch potatoes: From consumers to designers and active contributors. First Monday, 7 (12).Retrieved May 15, 2008, from http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/issue/view/152
• Greenfield, A. (2006). Everyware: The dawning age of ubiquitous computing. Berkeley, CA: New Riders.
• Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press.
• Jones, J. C. (1970). Design methods: Seeds of human futures. New York: Wiley-Interscience.
• Klein, J. T. (1990). Interdisciplinarity: History, theory, and practice. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
• Manfra, L. (2005, August/September). School survey 2005: Research – Its role in North American design education. Metropolis , 132-136. Retrieved April 20, 2008, from http://www.metropolismag.com/cda/story.php?artid=1502
• Nardi, B., & Kapetlinin, V. (2006). Acting with technology: Activity theory and interaction design . Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
• Nyquist, J., & Wulff, D. H. (2000). Recommendations from national studies on doctoral education . Retrieved June 1, 2008, from http://www.grad.washington.edu/envision/project_resources/national_recommend.html
• Sanders, E. B. -N. (2006). Scaffolds for building everyday creativity. In J. Frascara (Ed.), Designing effective communications: Creating contexts for clarity and meaning (pp. 65-77). New York: Allworth Press.
• Carnegie Foundation. (2005). The Carnegie classification of institutions of higher education: Basic classification technical details. Retrieved June 10, 2008, from http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/classifications/index.asp?key=798
• Tunstall, E. (2008, January 11). A presentation at the College of Design . North Carolina State University.

Applicants to the PhD program must have completed a four-year Bachelor of Arts or Bachelor of Science degree. A professional degree in architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning is recommended but not necessary. For students planning to pursue the Architectural Technology track within the PhD program, a background in architecture and/or engineering is required. For more information, please contact  Professor Ali Malkawi .

To be eligible for admission, applicants must also show evidence of promising academic work in their field of interest or in closely related fields. Students from outside the United States must demonstrate an excellent command of spoken and written English. Applicants from underrepresented and historically marginalized communities are particularly welcome and highly encouraged to apply. To attend a virtual information session, click here .

All applicants must indicate a proposed major area of study at the time of their initial application. These proposed areas of study should be congruent with the interests and expertise of at least one Graduate School of Design faculty member associated with the PhD program.

While the GRE is not required for admission, applications must include the following:

• Unofficial transcript(s).
• Three letters of recommendation.
• A statement of purpose that gives the admissions committee a clear sense of the student’s intellectual interests and strengths and conveys their research interests and qualifications.
• A short personal statement.
• A writing sample or samples (totalling no more than 20 pages, not including references). This can be a paper written for a course, journal article, and/or thesis excerpt. The writing sample should preferably focus on a subject related to architecture, landscape architecture, or urban planning.
• Please note that unless a specific justification is provided by the applicant, design portfolios are not typically considered as part of the application.

Applications to the PhD program in Architecture, Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning are received through the Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. For more information on the application process, requirements, and its timeline, visit their website .

If you have additional questions, please contact Margaret Moore de Chicojay , the PhD program administrator and a key point of contact for incoming and current students.

Harvard Griffin GSAS and Harvard GSD do not discriminate against applicants or students on the basis of race, color, national origin, ancestry or any other protected classification.

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PhD Program

PhD in Design

Scholarly research is an important cornerstone that distinguishes professions from trades. Research and practice-oriented disciplines, like design, grow and remain relevant only if their professionals constantly contribute to and expand this body of knowledge.

Our Doctor of Philosophy in Design invites design practitioners and teachers, aspiring design researchers and experienced professionals with a passion for design — to proactively engage with and build into this growing body of design research. It urges introspective designers with years of practical experience to validate and formalize theories, tools and techniques within the scholarly framework. And encourages research in the fertile fields where design intersects with science, humanities, arts, and education.

To pursue a PhD here, your research must match our Faculty's areas of interest . As a first step, go through these and contact the concerned faculty to develop your proposed research.

If you meet the eligibility criteria and there is an opening for your area of research, you may complete the formalities of application through the IITB Admission Portal.

The commitment for our PhD is long term requiring a minimum of 3 to 4 years. Apart from strong commitment, you require good analytical abilities, excellent language skills, tenacity, self-motivation, and open-mindedness, along with humility and a willingness to learn.

For details on the timeline of PhD research work at IDC School of Design, refer to this page: PhD Timeline .

• PhD Course Structure

Encouraging design research in India, our course is currently flexible and inclusive. For details on the course structure and credit requirements, refer to this page:  PhD Course Structure .

Eligibility  To know about the eligibility criteria and the different PhD categories, refer to this page:  PhD Eligibility Criteria .

PhD Application

All formalities of admission must be done through the IIT Bombay website. For all details related to the admission and application process, please visit the PhD Admission page: PhD Admission - IDC School of Design

IDC accepts applications through IITB-Monash PhD Program as well. For details regarding the program, please visit: IITB-Monash PhD Program .

Future Prospects

Our PhD scholars go on to become teachers and mentors. Many build careers in academics or design research. Some develop business ideas or design methods, while others pursue post-doctoral research.

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Thinking of doing a design PhD? Trust me, I'm a doctor.

In design post-graduation education the PhD is fast becoming the new Masters. This partly reflects the maturing of design research, but is also a response to the need for institutions to beef up their research quota and the attendant external funding. If you want to teach at a design college, the expectations of some institutions are often difficult to fulfill. Many ask for a PhD and several years of commercial practice, preferably current. It's a tough call - both are extremely time hungry and it's hard to do both well.

A Masters is often the terminating degree for a designer heading off professionally (certainly in the USA). For others it is a return the pleasure of self-determined projects having worked in agency life for a few years. But a PhD is a different beast to a Masters. I know of several designers who "fancy the idea" of doing a PhD and there are plenty of Masters students who are attracted to it, either because they want to expand their MA work or because they're not really sure what to do next.

Having officially become Dr. Polaine earlier in the year as well as having taught post-graduate students for many years, I thought I would offer some thoughts on the journey. As always, your mileage may vary. To PhD or not to PhD? There are plenty of reasons for wanting to start a PhD, but they are often not the ones that help you finish it. The problem is that you don't know this until you have started. Here are some of the common ones:

1. I don't know what I want to do for a career yet. A PhD will give me time to work it out.

Researching and writing a doctoral thesis is as much an act of endurance than anything else. If you don't have a clear idea in mind and the patience to write many thousands of words, read those words more than you care to remember and edit them ad infinitum, you are likely to drop out. One of the things that keeps you going - alongside simple bloody mindedness to just finish such a long-form project - is the interest in the area you are writing. If you don't have this up front, you're asking for trouble. A PhD is a dangerous drug for procrastinators.

2. I'm really interested in this subject and want to go deeper into it.

Great, but be prepared to be very bored by it after five years. As mentioned above, having a deep interest in the subject is one of the main motivators, but it's a mental fuel-depot that you burn through by the end. That's not to say I'm not still interested in the subject matter of my own PhD , but I felt pretty spent afterwards. It has really taken me about a year to start getting interested in interactivity and play again.

3. Nobody has researched/written about this area yet and I have a breakthrough idea.

Yes they have, you just don't know of it.

Although one of the main premises behind a PhD is that you contribute original knowledge to the field, as soon as you start researching more deeply you will find many texts and ideas almost identical to your own. Initially, this can be deeply depressing and I know several people who give up around this point (the drop-out rate of doctoral students is high). If you can persevere, you will not only find the cracks in the existing knowledge, but also work out how to re-configure it and build upon it. This re-thinking is your original contribution to the field. As Stephen Johnson explains , innovative ideas are usually incremental and take time, effort and luck.

4. I want to do a PhD, but I don't like writing much - I'm a designer after all.

Even a practice-based PhD requires writing and I can highly recommend writing as a creative process that's quite different from any other I know, especially in the digital age that designers work in. I expect activities like carpentry and sculpture are similar, but my skills in those areas are sub-kindergarten, so I can only speak from the crafts I know. I know many designers sketch a great deal, but it's different to writing.

I have learned more about the creative process through writing than I have through designing and the act of putting your thoughts down in a structured text does a lot to structure your thinking. Writing a PhD is like writing a book and you need to find a way to enjoy the act of writing in order to make it through the other side. Without this, the word count will seem like running a marathon wearing concrete boots.

Some people do their PhDs in teams or groups, but even in those cases the bulk of the writing (and often data-wrangling) is a lonely process. Like any writing, you just have to sit down and do your pages every day until you finish. Presenting papers and forming discussion groups all help ease the loneliness.

I think designers are sometimes scared of writing because their school education has ruined it for them. Think of writing as an act of design, except your tools are words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters. It will set you free to hack your text around just like you would any other material. Preciousness is the enemy of good writing - as William Faulkner said, "kill your darlings". (Actually Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch came up with "murder your darlings" first, which just proves the point that nobody is 100% original, eh?).

The plus side of the PhD proceess

If the above sounds rather negative, it's only because I want to spare you any illusions. There are many good things about taking on and, preferably, completing a PhD.

If you are planning to work in academia or research, it is now often a formal requirement for the job. The process also gives you a sense of rigor and deeper understanding of your area on an intellectual level that can be hard to make space for in the commercial world. Most commercial projects quite rightly don't have that kind of timescale and you have to drop parts of the process in order to get the deliverables our the door and within budget. They also tend to have much shorter timescales. A PhD is one of the few chances to set up your own project, finish it "the right way", and to a depth that a Masters doesn't offer. Despite the loneliness of the writing, it is a luxury.

It's important not to underestimate the value of becoming an expert, whether you work in academia or not. About two-thirds of the way through my PhD, I wasn't sure if I was going to carry on working in academia and couldn't see the point of doing a PhD otherwise. Somewhat swayed by Tom Coates' post-rationalism of why he gave up doing his PhD, I was ready to throw in the towel.

I am very thankful that my supervisor, Professor Ross Gibson, gave me some excellent advice and encouragement that saw me through to the end. He pointed out that the feeling of accomplishment that comes with finishing such a project as well as the sense of becoming the expert had great personal value. It almost sounds a little trivial, egotistical even, but it kept me going through the editing and re-structuring of the many, many drafts.

My examiners gave me very useful critique and feedback and I'm very thankful for it. Although they had experience and insights to offer, I realised that I knew more than them about my chosen subject. This is as it should be. A PhD topic is usual quite narrowly defined, but you go very deep into it. As learners we are so used to deferring to a higher authority on a subject it is rather eerie when you realise you are the authority on the subject.

De-coupling the reason for doing a PhD from its increasing necessity in academia was useful for me. This meant doing the PhD for its own sake, not for the qualification. I am a great starter of projects, but often lose interest once I have worked it all out in my head and understand the patterns and connections. But understanding those things in your own head is different from explaining them carefully to others. Quite apart from the intellectual stimulation and rigour that writing my PhD entailed, completing it was a valuable life experience.

• o 2 Favorite This
• Q 16 Comment

I have started the journey of writing my research proposal in application for a PhD in visual communication and after spending countless hours reading material that didn't add value to my research, I seemingly landed on papers and numerous thesis that are similar to my topic in the area of product design. To be honest, I was perplexed. After reading this, I have realised that that's normal and that this shouldn't stop me from continuing the quest to discover unanswered questions in my subject area. Thanks Polaine for sharing this exciting experience. Would be honored to consult you more...

Thanks for the great writeup. I have a doubt and would be grateful if you can provide some insights on the same. If I am seeking a career in academia ( examining the information design route ), then does it also mean that I will have to be "industry relevant" so to speak ? I have over a decade of industry experience but the main draw towards Ph.D and academic career is to phase out life governed by corporate culture and do original university research. It seems counter-intuitive of sorts that the expectation is to be working in the industry AND teach when the objective of research is to push new ideas which the industry should follow. This is not how it is for engineering and management, why is it so for design, if I may ask ?

What schools offer a PhD then? For those of us still determined to look into applying into Ph D programs what era some good schools in Ph D in Design . I know this is sort of hard to rate, depending on your interest but while researching I don't see a lot of schools with Ph D. programs so any feedback would def help.

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• CORRESPONDENCE
• 02 April 2024

How can we make PhD training fit for the modern world? Broaden its philosophical foundations

• Ganesh Alagarasan 0

Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati, India.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

You have highlighted how PhD training assessment has stagnated, despite evolving educational methodologies (see Nature 613 , 414 (2023) and Nature 627 , 244; 2024 ). In particular, you note the mismatch between the current PhD journey and the multifaceted demands of modern research and societal challenges.

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Nature 628 , 36 (2024)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-00969-x

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