BDI Call for papers: Undergraduate Design Research

Base Diseño e Innovación invites students, recent graduates, and academics from design schools to submit articles derived from research conducted in undergraduate educational settings. This section seeks to make visible research that contributes to the development of disciplinary knowledge in design, strengthening the academic circulation of experiences, methodologies, and findings that often remain outside the channels of scholarly publication.

The special issue “Training the Researchers of the Future: Emerging Practices in Design Schools” brought together contributions from various countries and design schools, highlighting the growing interest among students, graduates, and academics in strengthening research conducted within educational contexts. The published articles addressed issues related to sustainability, biodesign, pedagogical methodologies, collaborative creativity, and material innovation, among other areas, demonstrating that undergraduate research is a fertile ground for generating relevant and contextualized knowledge.

Building on the interest generated and the outcomes of this initiative, Base Diseño e Innovación (BDI) has established a permanent section dedicated to disseminating research developed in design schools by students, recent graduates, and academics engaged in strengthening undergraduate research training. The purpose of this section is to create a platform for the dissemination and discussion of emerging research, promoting the international exchange of experiences and strengthening design as a field of knowledge.

Likewise, this section seeks to contribute to the cumulative development of design knowledge by making undergraduate research visible, accessible, and reusable by future researchers and practitioners.

The experience also revealed that each year numerous schools develop research projects, seminars, workshops, laboratories, and other curricular activities that explore problems relevant to the discipline and society. However, much of this knowledge remains confined to institutional archives or university libraries, hindering its dissemination and discussion within the field.

Without access to formal channels of scholarly dissemination, knowledge generated in educational settings often remains invisible to the broader design community. As a result, successive generations of students frequently revisit similar problems, methodologies, and material explorations without the opportunity to build upon previous findings.

Given the above, BDI's new "Undergraduate Design Research” section seeks to publish research developed within an undergraduate educational context that contributes to the advancement of disciplinary knowledge in design. Therefore, priority will be given to contributions that formulate relevant problems for the field, engage with specialized literature, and develop explicit, communicable, and replicable methodological processes. Articles must be situated within a relevant theoretical framework and engage with the state of knowledge in the relevant area.

Furthermore, submissions are expected to address key dimensions of scholarly research, including the systematic organization of information, the traceability of data collection and analysis processes, the validation of findings, and their contribution to the cumulative development of design knowledge. Beyond the project's quality of a proposal, this section seeks to highlight research capable of producing transferable, reflective, and relevant knowledge for the field of design and its diverse areas of application.

Suggested thematic lines

The call for proposals welcomes contributions related to, among others, the following lines:

Design research developed at the undergraduate level
Research developed in undergraduate thesis projects, seminars, workshops, laboratories, or curricular activities that contribute to the development of disciplinary knowledge in design.
Pedagogies and methodologies for research training
Teaching experiences aimed at strengthening undergraduate design research, including curricular or pedagogical innovation, research methodologies, or research-based learning.
Interdisciplinary research and situated contexts
Projects that link design with other disciplines and address social, cultural, technological, educational, or environmental issues from situated perspectives.
Material, technological and design experimentation
Research related to materials, manufacturing, emerging technologies, artificial intelligence, sustainability, biodesign, speculative design, and design experimentation.

Types of contributions

Manuscripts will be accepted in the following forms:

Original research
Research on Design Education
Critical or systematic literature reviews
Theoretical articles

Submission requirements

Manuscripts must be original and unpublished.
Manuscripts should include a relevant theoretical framework, engagement with the state of knowledge in the field, a clearly defined research problem or question, objectives, methodology, results, discussion, and conclusions.
Articles in Spanish or English will be accepted.
Maximum length: 5000 words.
Articles must follow APA 7th edition guidelines.
Manuscripts must be submitted exclusively through the journal's OJS platform.
All submissions will be evaluated through double-blind peer review.

About the Journal

Base Diseño e Innovación is a bilingual (Spanish and English) biannual journal, published by the School of Design at Universidad del Desarrollo. Its research section is peer-reviewed using a double-blind process and focuses on disseminating new knowledge in the field of design and related areas.

The journal publishes research about design, for design, and through design, considering diverse theoretical, methodological, and design approaches. Through its open access policy, it seeks to contribute to the international circulation of knowledge and strengthening of design as a discipline.

Inquiries: [email protected]

Download full call for papers