design research is an open field of information concerning design relevant facts, details or gossips. the wholeness of any information would create a global view to the design world. but that's not the aim of design research.
design itself is devided - by the scientists as i may call them - into several theoretical groups:
design ethics for instance copes with questions and problems around the fundamentals of how-to-design, how-to-produce or how-to-innovate. it trys to get to the bottom of the moral and ethical maxims of the designer. famous representives of this field are (i.e.) viktor papanek who published several books like 'desing for the real world' or 'design for the human scale' or kalle lasn, the co-founder of adbuster magazine and author of several books.
an other field called design philosophy takes care of –the title of this category may say it already– the philosophical aims and questions of design. the 'why' is the focus of this category. some of you might have heard about michel foucault, gilles deleuze or roland barthes.
and then –of course– there is the part of design history that aims to get knowledge about the past and present of products and designers and which categorizes certain designers/products into epoches.
keeping this in mind you will get to know design methods which can help to get what you want to know.
all this fields and categories try to give the impression of objectivity and trueness. but it is the topic of the researcher to filter the information and to link several articles or texts with each other. and therefor –to come to an end– the researcher has to have an opinion, a personal point of view which helps to straighten out the idea of the research.
