Danish Design Researchers Joins Forces

The Research Network for Questioning Responsible Danish Design (ResQ Danish Design) is a national collaboration between invited senior design researchers from all university-level research institutions in Denmark.

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. 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.