Research
Research sessions, coded evidence, findings, questions, program decisions, and signals.
Published research
Making a Design Culture ↗
A critical dialogue on agency, experimentation, and material capacity in the development of a design culture.
The full research, framework, quotations, contributors, method, and references are published directly in the KoD repository.
Research
Focus Groups
Advisory Board Focus Group 01
19 Jan 2025
Purpose · Evaluate the first edition and identify research themes around cross-disciplinary exchange, programme format, and future topics.
Major finding · Participants linked KoD's value to cross-disciplinary exchange and to smaller, more challenging discussions that encouraged active participation.
Advisory Board Focus Group 02
2 Feb 2025
Purpose · Deepen the research around documentation, AI, cultural knowledge, skill development, value, and KoD outcomes.
Major finding · Knowledge continuity emerged as a central issue: research, decisions, and design reasoning need stronger documentation so later learning can build on them.
Past Speaker Focus Group
1 Sep 2026
Purpose · Test what past speakers valued, what needed improvement, and what should inform the third edition.
Major finding · Cross-disciplinary learning and community remained central to KoD's value, alongside requests for clearer purpose and more applied participation.
Research dialogues
KoD × SXSW London Research Dialogue
26 May 2026 · Critical dialogue on agency, originality, experimentation, making, public life, time, and local-global knowledge. The analysis developed into the Making a Design Culture research framework.
Coded
Strategic Advisory Research
2026 · Advisory research examining evidence quality, authenticity, data, sector development, sustainability, and longer-term direction.
Confidential source · Public metadata only
Creative-Sector Challenges Research
22 Jun 2026 · Advisory research used to test questions around people, infrastructure, institutions, data gaps, production, operating conditions, and continuity.
Confidential source · Public metadata only
Coded research data
Recurring themes across the research
Cross-disciplinary exchange
Participants repeatedly describe value in bringing different disciplines, forms of expertise, and professional perspectives into the same inquiry.
Advisory Board research · coded theme
Documentation + continuity
Research repeatedly returns to what gets recorded, preserved, revisited, and made usable after a session or project ends.
Advisory Board research · coded theme
Applied learning + making
Participants distinguish passive presentation from structured making, demonstration, prototyping, and direct experience with tools or processes.
Advisory Board research · coded theme
Critical dialogue
Smaller groups, challenging questions, direct criticism, and moderated disagreement appear as conditions that can produce deeper discussion.
Advisory Board research · coded theme
Audience + format
The research examines who KoD is for, how sessions are structured, how people navigate the day, and what makes participation useful.
Program evaluation · coded theme
Futures + emerging roles
Research records changing professional roles, new combinations of disciplines, AI-enabled processes, and questions about capabilities that may matter next.
Signals + futures · coded theme
Advisory Board research
Design industry insights
Documentation gap
Designers are not documenting their process, decisions, or reasoning. Without this, knowledge cannot be shared, transferred, or built upon.
AI and meaning
AI is generating outputs that bypass the thinking process. The danger lies less in the tool and more in designers ceasing to ask why.
Saudi culture as material
Untapped potential in cultural heritage, from woodwork and craft to poetry and narrative, as source material for contemporary design.
Financial literacy
Designers struggle to quantify the value they create. The financial aspect is identified as the biggest structural weakness in the industry, everywhere in the world.
Speed vs depth
The development timeline moves at a pace that makes deep research and documentation difficult.
The charity perception
Consumers often view buying from local designers as an act of charity rather than a choice based on desire or product quality.
From pattern to perspective
Open research questions
Meaning vs the sake of it
A recurring concern: many practitioners design for the sake of it. Meaning can come from inspiration and narrative, but also from responding rigorously to existing factors and constraints.
The teachable unknown
There is no clear rule for a visually pleasing composition. Talent plays a role, but those without obvious natural talent also deserve a pathway. How to make this teachable remains an open research question.
Born or taught
The board landed on both. Skill, technique, and life experience move a designer through stages; some are more receptive to creativity, others to analysis. Mastery is a path that unfolds over time.
Value engineering reality
A perfect design meets the reality of budget and time. The skill is protecting value, and being strong enough to influence the client, when constraints push back.
Research & future directions
From feedback to action
| Feedback | Action taken |
|---|---|
| Too many simultaneous sessions with no navigation | Clearer signage and session-type indicators throughout |
| Workshops needed structure, not showcases | Masterclasses with structured formats and external facilitators |
| Speakers needed clearer focal points | Dedicated speaking setups per space; identification improved |
| Sessions felt siloed from each other | All sessions designed explicitly as exchanges across fields |
| More themed, curated programming requested | Every session mapped to the year's theme with clear field connections |
| Applied and hands-on formats wanted | Applied sessions integrated throughout the full day |
Design Futures & Signals
Signals we are watching
These weak signals were gathered through advisory-board research and the exchanges behind the SXSW London session. None is presented as a certainty; each is preserved as a thread worth following.
JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out
Coined by Sal Kurdi-Serafi. A counter-movement to sensory overload. As experiences become saturated, design turns toward simplicity, smaller groups, and genuine human connection over mass appeal.
From buzzwords to real language
Practitioners are abandoning borrowed jargon like generic sustainability talk, and arriving with their own vocabulary, explaining what they actually mean. A quiet shift toward semantic honesty.
Research replaces focus groups
A move away from focus groups toward research groups and feedback loops, evidence and lived experience over assumption. Design that documents the why behind the what.
Personalisation at scale
Mass products and environments engineered to feel made-for-you. The design challenge of the next phase is the illusion, and the reality, of the personal inside the mass.
Designing for the senses
Sound, light, and smell moving from afterthought to the core of an experience. Once you have felt how a space should sound or be lit, you cannot unknow it.
Human scale over the bombastic
A turn toward developments that knit into existing urban fabric, like Diriyah Gate, over spectacle for its own sake. Provenance and human scale as markers of quality.
The end of import consulting
A shift away from generic, slide-deck-driven consulting toward authentic local identity and capability built from within. The era of imported best practice is closing.
A safe space to fail
The missing layer in a young design culture: room to sketch, experiment, take risks, and make mistakes. Iteration, more than the instant right answer, is how maturity arrives.
Roles in flux
New functions appearing fast, from accessibility specialists to chief experience and chief happiness officers. Job titles are morphing ahead of the institutions around them.
Saudi heritage as source
Craft, literature, poetry, and material traditions, from Jeddah woodwork to the mashrabiya, translated into contemporary graphic, spatial, and narrative design. A cultural priority and a commercial opportunity.
Gaming as a methodology
Less about designing games and more about gaming logic, interaction design, and systems thinking applied across architecture, education, and public space. Significantly underrepresented.
AI as process, not output
Using AI to sort data, generate questions, and stress-test thinking instead of producing finished designs. AI literacy is emerging as a rare, valuable skill in its own right.
Content taxonomy
Eight editorial categories
#FieldNotes
Research · Reports · Papers · Findings · Articles
#Signals
Emerging patterns · Futures observations · Behavioural shifts · Cultural indicators
#Community
Contributors · Alumni · Open calls · Volunteers
#Sessions
Talks · Keynotes · Panels
#Voices
Interviews · Perspectives · Guest contributions
#Labs
Workshops · Experiments · Prototypes
#Archive
Historical records · Past editions · Documentation
#Partnerships
Collaborations · Institutional relationships