Navigating Design Research at the BurgLabs: Towards a Methodology

Within the BurgLabs a process to systematically reflect on, develope and formalize methodological approaches was initiated in 2025 – informally and somehow ironically labled as Meth.Lab. The current state of this ambitious project is presented on the following pages, where I will delineate the methodological terrain of design-research at the BurgLabs. Methodology, colloquially understood as a theory of methods, provides “arguments for the legitimacy of the respective method as a scientifically appropriate procedure for gaining knowledge”¹ . While a particular method can only be critically discussed in relation to a research problem and research design, methodologies should provide a wider framework that articulates overarching theoretical assumptions and concepts. This is a crucial condition for the critical discussion and systematic development of a research approach, as it establishes transparent criteria for planning and evaluating research processes and results. In other words, methodology mediates between theory and practice.

Theory and practice have a particularly uneasy relationship in design. Albeit there’s long and varied discourse on that matter as well as attempts to resolve this tension, there’s often a noticable divide that is reflected in institutional divisions. To some degree this is linked to an understanding of theories as sets of abstract rules or dictating methods, which are understood as strict routines that must be meticulously adhered to. While it can be said, that this view neglects aspects of creativity, intuition and happenstance in scientific research and presents a narrow view of methodological discourses² , the history of design methodology³ as well as more recent academic contributions⁴ to the subject confirm that suspicion. Therefore, design theories have often related to design practice more in the way, that literary studies or art history relate their respective fields of practice – as oberservers detached from their objects of research. When it comes to design research however, there is an obvious need to distinguish what has been termed “designerly ways of knowing”⁵ from scientific practice and establish framworks to reasonably discuss and evaluate research practices in the design context. According to design theorist Wolfgang Jonas, this would require a “genuine design research paradigm”⁶ , that would have to theorize design research practice sufficiently without imposing on it values and conditions from other disciplines.