Visual exploration of the PhDs in design undertaken in Portugal. Starting with the information extracted from the databases produced during the investigation, the company Calibro developed its dynamic representation. Made in Flourish.

The project uses paper to represent the distribution of design schools throughout the territory. The proportion of the crosses varies according to the number of graduates within the region. In the cosmopolitan areas, such as Lisbon and Porto, the crosses become smaller, not due to the number of graduates, but because of the density and variety of schools. This poster was developed based on the geographical location and number of design graduates in Portugal. The visualisation was commissioned by the team of the DesignOBS project (Towards a Design Observatory in Portugal, www.designobs.pt), following a distributed and participatory approach.

The present study undertaken within the DesignOBS project, is based on 172 PhD theses in Design submitted to the Portuguese National Design Schools between 2005 and 2019. It focuses in particular on the extraction and analysis of 522 PhD citations appended to design doctoral work. The analysis is used to observe school impact, explore the weight of previous design-focused and non-design doctoral work to develop PhD research in Design in the country. The results reveal few connections between doctorates and few overlaps in- between as well as outside design schools thus indicating poor continuity and reproducibility of domestic doctoral work, little tradition of PhD citation, and an important weight of non-design schools. A network-based visualisation of the connections between PhDs in Design within PhD thesis, by use of a citation analysis method, enabled to draw reflections on the status of domestic doctoral research in Portugal and provides an empirical approach to explore the reproducibility of this type of research which may be used in other countries.