Design science

The term design science was introduced in 1963 by R. Buckminster Fuller  who defined it as a systematic form of designing. The concept of design science was taken up in S. A. Gregory's 1966 book of the 1965 Design Methods Conference  where he drew the distinction between scientific method and design method. Gregory was clear in his view that design was not a science and that design science referred to the scientific study of design. Herbert Simon in his 1968 Karl Taylor Compton lectures  used and popularized these terms in his argument for the scientific study of the artificial (as opposed to the natural). Over the intervening period the two terms have co-mingled to the point where design science has come to have both meanings, with the meaning of scientific study of design now predominating.


Science of design
The first edition of Simon's The Sciences of the Artificial, published in 1996, built on previous developments and motivated the development of systematic and formalized design methodologies relevant to many design disciplines, for example architecture, engineering, urban planning, medicine, computer science, and management studies . Simon's ideas about the science of design also motivated the development of design research and the scientific study of designing . Venable argues for the need to adopt standards in relation to theory and theorising within design science and proposes some ideas for their form and level of detail. In his book Simon also used the idea of a theory of design alluding to design science as a science of design. For example, the axiomatic theory of design described in  presents a domain independent theory that can explain or prescribe the design process. Developing from the idea of a 'design science' there has been recurrent concern to differentiate design from science  Cross differentiated between scientific design, design science and a science of design . The scientific study of design does not require or assume that the acts of designing are themselves scientific and an increasing number of research programs take this view . Cross uses the term 'designerly' to distinguish designing from other kinds of human activity