Building Collaborative Culture Between Design Research and Practice Through Graduate Education

The concept of this paper is based on the framework in which the research is situated within the social structure that constitutes people, activity, context and culture. It explores industrial(product) design’s and artifact’s contribution to knowledge generation and its utilisation by research. The following four research areas are considered:(i) research before the design work is started, (ii) concurrent research conducted during the early stage of the design process, (iii)concurrent research carried out during the design and development stage and (iv) research when an artifact is produced and is on the market.The presented approach has demonstrated its potential to generate the new knowledge needed to support innovative artifact design and collaborative culture building between research and practice. This has evolved into the "research-practice model" which aims to demonstrate that research should be an integral part of practice. The paper illustrates with examples how graduate research at a PhD and Research Masters level can be utilised for collaborative culture building.