ResQ Danish Design: Research network for questioning responsible design

Designing requires enormous social and moral responsibility as we are surrounded by products and services that shape – and simultaneously get shaped by – the way we live. (Eggink et al. 2020).

From being an ideal, it has become imperative to act responsibly in all matters in society. The term ‘responsible design’ has been described as design that ‘responds to the needs of and challenges faced by the society’ (Eggink et al. 2020). Currently, in the sense of urgency, there is an overwhelming set of initiatives, challenges and re-orientations of previous approaches being both arbitrarily and systematically tried out, including but not limited to sustainability, gender issues, ethnic rights, inclusivity, economic marginalisation, reconnecting man and nature, peace movements, CSR and business ethics, climate crisis responses and food and energy scarcity (Cooper, 2005). Despite this overwhelmingly diverse set of initiatives scattered across institutions, we lack a clear conceptual understanding of what ‘responsible design’ is, its implications and how it may be practised.

The ResQ-Design project will bring together a diverse set of design researchers from across disciplines and institutions in Denmark for the first time to explore and question a) what responsible design is; b) what drives the responsible design agendas; and what are the broad implications of responsible design for, c) design processes and practices, d) designed solutions, e) design institutions, and f) design educations. This new exploratory research network will include a set of research workshops, exchanges, conference participation, and large-scale grant application writing, which, combined, target the exchange of current ideas, projects and agendas across the network, to establish new research constellations, foster new original ideas and approaches, leading to newly established joint research funding ventures.