Design Research & Generative Conversation: Dean Noel’s Address to Problematique Dialogue 2026

 
Lesley-Ann Noel, distinguished Dean of the Faculty of Design at OCAD University, generously shared her thoughts and critical perspectives in this warm welcome to attendees of Problematique Dialogue 2026.

I would also like to situate myself in relation to this work. I have been a member of the Design Research Society for over ten years, and my engagement with DRS has been formative for my research, teaching, and leadership. I currently serve as a co-convenor of two DRS Special Interest Groups: the Education Special Interest Group (EdSIG) and the Pluriversal Design Special Interest Group (PluriSIG). These roles have given me a very concrete view of how design research is being rigorously extended and re-oriented within the Society. The Problematique Dialogue reflects many of the commitments that have kept me engaged with DRS over time.

At its core, the Design Research Society exists to promote and support rigorous design research, to foster interdisciplinary and international exchange, and to advance design as a field capable of engaging complex social, cultural, political, and ecological realities. DRS has consistently argued that design research is not peripheral to these challenges—it is one of the means through which they can be examined, questioned, and reframed. 

This is a small-group, systems-thinking convening grounded in structured generative conversation using the Banathy methodology. Rather than prioritizing presentation, hierarchy, or individual authority, it treats conversation itself as a disciplined mode of inquiry. Béla Banathy’s insight—that when facing complexity, shared understanding matters more than individual certainty—aligns closely with long-standing currents in design research, particularly within the Design Research Society.

The Dialogue’s structure resonates clearly with the aims of EdSIG, which focuses explicitly on design education as a site of research. EdSIG is committed to supporting and promoting rigorous research that improves design education across subject areas, while recognising the plurality of design education as a situated and contextualised practice. It resists the idea that there is a single, universal model of design education, foregrounding instead the diversity of pedagogical contexts and institutional conditions in which design is taught and learned.

From this perspective, the Banathy methodology reflects a view of learning that EdSIG takes seriously. Dialogue, reflection, and collective sense-making are not supplementary activities; they are central to how design knowledge is developed and shared. This orientation also aligns with EdSIG’s aim to articulate and advocate for the value of design education within wider social and political contexts, where education shapes how design engages the world.

At the same time, the Problematique Dialogue engages directly with the commitments of PluriSIG, whose work addresses foundational questions of epistemology, power, and historical imbalance within design research. PluriSIG actively seeks to bring design epistemologies and methods—particularly those from outside Europe and North America—into dialogue with dominant frameworks that have shaped the field. It challenges inherited assumptions about development and modernity, and interrogates how colonial and modernist paradigms continue to structure what counts as legitimate knowledge.

PluriSIG places strong emphasis on intersectional dialogue, on mentoring practitioners and researchers from historically marginalised contexts, and on co-creating new ways of validating knowledge that challenge traditional academic practices. From this standpoint, dialogue is an intentional and consequential practice: the way conversations are designed can either reproduce or unsettle hegemonic assumptions within design research.

Seen through this lens, the Problematique Dialogue can be understood as a pluriversal research practice. It does not seek consensus or closure. Instead, it creates conditions for multiple perspectives, histories, and ways of knowing to coexist and interact—sometimes uncomfortably, and productively so. This reflects PluriSIG’s aim of contributing to a broader re-orientation of design, one that recognises multiple ways of doing and understanding design and that takes seriously historical power imbalances in the field.

Together, EdSIG and PluriSIG articulate two critical dimensions of contemporary design research within The Design Research Society. EdSIG focuses on how design knowledge is cultivated, transmitted, and valued through education. PluriSIG focuses on whose knowledge is recognised, whose histories are foregrounded, and how design research can confront and rework hegemonic structures. Problematique Dialogue sits at the intersection of these concerns.

The questions animating this gathering—about how knowledge is generated and transmitted, how difference and solidarity are negotiated, how concepts of progress and value are constructed, and how care, inequality, and community are systemically produced—are not incidental. They are core research concerns for the Design Research Society and demand inquiry that is dialogic, reflexive, and able to hold complexity without premature simplification.

This is where systems thinking and design research most clearly converge. Both recognise that contemporary challenges are interconnected, historically situated, and resistant to linear solutions. Addressing them requires not only methods and tools, but carefully designed spaces for thinking together—spaces that allow assumptions to be questioned and understanding to emerge over time.

sLab’s work exemplifies this alignment. By bringing systems thinking, structured dialogue, and design inquiry together, sLab creates conditions for learning and research that prioritise collective understanding over individual performance. This reflects a core DRS value: that innovation is not only about producing outcomes, but about building the capacity to think and act together amid uncertainty.

As you move into the coming days, I invite you to approach this Dialogue in the spirit long advanced by the Design Research Society, and particularly through the work of EdSIG and PluriSIG—with patience, humility, and a willingness to stay with complexity. The Banathy methodology asks us to listen carefully, to question our assumptions, and to allow our thinking to evolve through engagement with others.

Like much of the most meaningful design research, the value of this work may not be immediately visible. But it is often durable, shaping how we teach, how we research, and how we understand our roles as designers and researchers within complex systems.

I wish you a productive, challenging, and generative few days of dialogue. Thank you for being here, thank you to sLab for convening this Dialogue, and welcome to Problematique Dialogue, 2026.