The Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has been awarded a Small Grant for Training and Research to support a sustained research training program focused on design. In addition to training students in theoretical concepts for understanding the social construction of technology, the program will develop research competence in exploring the social, cultural and political aspects of the process of designing technologies. In the process of designing a technology, assumptions about human nature and society come together with heterogeneous values, short-term and long-term interests, and a wide variety of technical and social factors, giving rise to a designed object (system, process, space). STS scholarship has made great strides in understanding the social construction of technology, but previously has not often focused explicitly or directly on the process of designing. This project focuses STS scholarship on design. Students recruited for this initiative carry out research on practices in design, using a variety of observational, archival, conceptual, and experiential methods. The 1997-98 NSF planning grant (SBR-9711830) helped the Rensselaer group to understand that practices of design must be situated in both an educational setting, such as Rensselaer itself, and an industrial setting. It is precisely the synergy between the research explorations in these two settings that has taught us the most about design. Rensselaer's STS department is well-situated to undertake this project because of its strong, interdisciplinary faculty and their increasing involvement in a variety of design-related activities on Rensselaer's campus. Three years of National Science Foundation funding will be used to support three graduate students and a post-doctoral fellow, and to extend the program's colloquium series.
