On November 1, 1755 a massive earthquake, which was immediately followed by a tsunami wave and subsequent five-day fire, destroyed most buildings and killed upwards of 90,000 people in Lisbon, Portugal. Fast forward two-hundred and fifty-one years to November 1, 2006, also in Lisbon, as the international conference of the Design Research Society – titled Wonderground – began. Although Lisbon is no longer the center of global navigation, the city’s strutting rooster symbol could be interpreted as a sign of its proud rebirth.

The Design Research Society’s purpose is to promote “the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields,” and is largely an academically-oriented enterprise with an international membership of PhD-rank scholars and university faculty. The self-declared disciplinary focus of most Wonderground attendees (twenty-five countries’ worth, around 300 in number) was, in descending order: industrial design, architecture and communication design. Other disciplines were lesser in number, but speaker biographies reveal terms such as: strategic design, digital design, interior design and mechanical engineering, along with interdisciplinary design critics, curators, historians and educators.

In his opening remarks, co-organizer Chris Rust exhorted the assembly to embrace “good science and great uncertainty.” These words were proved true, as the majority of presentations were scientifically sound and ostensibly objective in structure, employing survey results, statistics, theoretical models, interviews, measurements, and so on – and duly delivered with conference-mandated, and centrally served, PowerPoint software. The “great uncertainty” term may have referred to a few conference organizational glitches, but local host Eduardo Côrte-Real was overheard to exclaim that the “conference would run itself!” Indeed, it did.

Typically, two morning plenary sessions and a lunch break were followed by concurrent sessions in the afternoon; during any given time slot, up to ten groups of four presentations per session were made, which thinned the audience to single digits for some scholars. In spite of this, however, the heart of Wonderground seemed to be in the right place, with well-intentioned hosts. Fortunately, the presentations themselves took center stage.

Two research orientations dominated the conference: basic and applied, which is typical of most disciplines, and ranged from abstract, philosophical and experimental to concrete and utilitarian. The presentations that linked scholars’ research to applied problem-solving scenarios or ones whose theory-driven concepts lead to experimental forms were the most compelling – two examples follow.

Elizabeth Tunstall, a social anthropologist teaching in the design area at the University of Illinois–Chicago, walked the audience through the celebrated Design for Democracy project, a collaboration between the AIGA (America’s professional organization for design), the UPA (Usability Professionals’ Association), government officials and local citizens. Employing ethnographic observation as a research methodology, the project engaged voters in a process of “co-design,” and considered the “entire experience” of voting, from information about the election to way-finding at the polling place. As part of the project’s effort at “reframing American democracy” the work was exhibited at the Pompidou Center in Paris.

“Every time a person approaches an object, a conversation between the two develops,” Edgar Rodriguez Ramirez asserted in his abstract. Rodriguez Ramirez, a native of Mexico who’s completing his PhD at the Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, showed three product designs that were created using social affordance, participatory experience design and product ontology as their respective models. Cleverly conjoined coffee cups made a commentary on the social function of having coffee together, a computer trolley prototype for Hewlett Packard considered how people use and store their laptops, and a lamp that surprised viewer expectations by hiding its light source demonstrated that theory can directly inform innovative design solutions.

As to be expected at a conference with over 250 presentations, a few fell short of their potential.

Wendy Wong, from York University in Toronto, spoke about China’s emerging design industry. Besides the obvious – that Chinese design professionals are aggressively contributing to the robust economy, and sometimes ignoring Western copyright and registered trademarks along the way – she stated that China now has over 400 design programs in institutions of higher learning. What she didn’t address, despite audience inquiry along this line, is whether or not the designers’ relative creative freedoms in the service of the marketplace will lead to needed social and political reforms.

Danish computer scientist Per Galle’s over-reaching “Worldviews for Design Theory” lamented that the field of design research lacks agreement among scholars, and therefore suffers from “insidious inconsistency.” Drawing an analogy to a disease in need of a cure, Galle’s presentation seemed uncomfortable with the notion of uncertainty in design, and instead advocated for the discipline to have a monolithic and codified single philosophy. The shear plurality of presentations at Wonderground provided a viable and convincing alternative.

On occasion, less formal discussions were held, and these invited participation – a refreshing change in format. One such gathering, which began by having the attendees arrange the chairs in a circle, was hosted by Victor Margolin and Richard Buchanan, editors of the journal Design Issues; they were joined by Teal Triggs, an editor of Visual Communication. Editorial style, manuscript submission process, acceptance rates, and the culture of peer-review were among topics that emerged in the session’s robust dialog.

Memorable aspects of Wonderground came from unexpected places. A informal late night car tour by Portuguese graphic design professor Helena Barbosa enabled a few of us to see Lisbon’s modern side, including its Expo grounds and the Santiago Calatrava-designed train station. A last day bus tour to Sintra, a former resort for the monarchy, was dramatic: palm trees, vacation homes and sunshine at sea-level gave way to wooded hills covered in low-lying clouds, moody coniferous trees, a ninth century Moorish castle and a picturesque royal palace built in 1839.

Cameras clicking, chatting amongst new friends, swapping business cards and sipping port wine – finally, Wonderground was found.