Dilemmas When Designing Beyond Disciplines

Impact-driven research is increasingly transdisciplinary, with design recognized as providing a valuable contribution to such endeavours. However, integrating design within transdisciplinary research is far from straightforward. While design offers generative, participatory, and systems-oriented approaches, it also introduces dilemmas around collaboration, ownership, power dynamics, and the need to navigate between diverse ways of knowing.
To surface and explore these tensions, we engaged in a two-part inquiry: an online questionnaire and a collaborative session with designers working in a variety of transdisciplinary research projects. Through thematic analysis of the collected reflections, we identified three overarching clusters of dilemmas: The Pragmatism Dilemma, The Positioning Dilemma, and The Provocation Dilemma.
Rather than prescribing fixed solutions, we propose sets of reflective questions aimed at navigating these dilemmas. These questions are intended to support joint, critical reflection in complex collaborative processes. Our aim is to advance discourse on socially engaged scholarship and transdisciplinary design by making explicit the dilemmas that often remain implicit. In doing so, we argue that recognizing and actively navigating dilemmas is a core aspect of transdisciplinary practices. Acknowledging such tensions helps to strengthen both process and outcome in collaborative research.