Call for Papers: Cubic Issue #11 - The Designer as Bricoleur
Exploring Praxiology, Epistemology, and Phenomenology in Design Research
Issue Editors: Daniel Echeverri (Masaryk University) and Patrick Lichty (Winona State University)
We invite contributions that explore design research through the lenses of praxiology (design practice and processes), epistemology (design knowledge and ways of knowing), and phenomenology (experience of designed artefacts) (Cross 1999). The central, transversal theme is the researcher-as-bricoleur (Crotty 1998; Denzin and Lincoln 2008).
Design research occupies a unique space where creative exploration and scholarly inquiry converge (Niedderer and Roworth-Stokes 2007). Moving beyond traditional scientific methodologies, it embraces speculation, open-endedness, and generative approaches. This call seeks to deepen understanding of how design knowledge is generated, validated, and disseminated (Gaver 2012; Pierce 2014), focusing on the actions, knowledge, and experiences of the design researcher as a bricoleur.
Drawing on Lévi-Strauss (1966), the bricoleur is one who creatively adapts and improvises with available materials and knowledge to solve problems. This approach resonates with the iterative and exploratory nature of design research (Redström 2021), where solutions often emerge organically through experimentation. It also aligns with constructionist (Harel and Papert 1991) and the constructivist (Koskinen et al. 2011; Krogh and Koskinen 2020) principles of design research, and with the concept of Research through Design (Frayling 1993; Findeli 1998), all of which view knowledge as actively constructed through engagement with design processes and outcomes.
Possible application areas for these explorations include, but are not limited to, interaction design, service design, material design, system design, and social design. We particularly encourage submissions that investigate hybrid forms of making—such as additive and subtractive fabrication, large language models, robotics, mixed/augmented/virtual reality, parametric and generative methods, biotechnologies, and smart materials—as tools at hand for the bricoleur
Important dates:
- Call for contributions: 15 April 2026
- Submission deadline: 1 September 2026 (noon, Hong Kong Time)
- Peer review notification: 1 November 2026
- Final publication: 1 February 2027
