Research design and the professional model

This paper is an intermediate report from a research project at the Center for Profession Studies, Institute for Multidisciplinary Research, Malmö University, Sweden. The title of the project is “Design Articulations: when well-articulated notions and unarticulated self images meet” (DA). The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council. Design, as a discipline, has several distinctive characteristics making it an interesting topic for inquire within the domain of profession studies. In this paper we try to scrutinize, the tension between established notions of profession studies and the notion of design as a profession and how that tension relates to how professions are expected to be based on “scientific knowledge”. Based on the belief that different professions both have different kinds of authority and get their legitimacy from different sources, we discuss what it would entail to take the mindsets underpinning the traditional art-and-design seriously and whether other professions really are prepared for what that would entail