Research Recommendations (848)

Develop digital software that optimizes consultation of segmentation data, allows new combinations through database cross-referencing, and can be tested through partnerships with used-car websites, rent-a-car companies, and brand dealerships, aiming at real-context experimentation and agreement with ACAP.

Audience:

Researchers, software developers, automotive platforms, ACAP...

Domain:

Digital Segmentation Tool / Industry Deployment

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Create a new line of scientific research through a specialization course in niche individual transport design based on the results of this investigation.

Audience:

Researchers, educators, curriculum leaders, students

Domain:

Transport Design Education / Research Line Building

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Conduct interviews with designers in order to document their everyday work, relationships with clients, studio management practices, collaboration with colleagues, and the ways they identified opportunities, clients, and ideas.

Audience:

Researchers, design historians, communication designers

Domain:

Oral History of Communication Design

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

High

Create an exhaustive survey of Portuguese designers active since the beginning of the twentieth century and connect those names to their clients, design companies, and corresponding works.

Audience:

Researchers, archivists, museums, design historians

Domain:

Designer Census / Portuguese Communication Design History

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study the public impact of design objects by identifying which ones entered the visual culture of generations and examining whether this happened through repetition, scale, or specific communicative characteristics.

Audience:

Researchers, visual-culture scholars, design historians

Domain:

Public Impact / Visual Culture

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Broaden the range of objects considered part of graphic design history and study supports such as military booklets, passports, diplomas, school manuals, missals, indulgences, edicts, maps, and bulletins.

Audience:

Researchers, archivists, design historians, curators

Domain:

Expanded Object Field / Communication Design History

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Develop sectorial histories that relate and compare objects of the same type, such as record covers or popular-festival posters.

Audience:

Researchers, design historians, curators

Domain:

Sectorial Histories / Object Typologies

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

High

Survey the technological conditions of Portuguese printing and production, especially where they evolved differently from other European contexts due to specific legal and industrial constraints.

Audience:

Researchers, print historians, technology historians

Domain:

Printing Technology Conditions / Historical Context

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Produce a survey of exceptional cases in Portuguese communication design, similar to the work already undertaken on Paulo d’Cantos.

Audience:

Researchers, design historians, curators

Domain:

Exceptional Cases / Portuguese Design History

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

High

Shift historiography from a history of objects toward a history of problems, relationships, and solutions, using words and images to reconstruct those equations.

Audience:

Researchers, design theorists, historians

Domain:

Historiographic Method / Problems-Relations-Solutions

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Rethink how the history of communication design can serve design students, including analysis of narrative contents in existing histories and the extent to which those histories influence teaching and practice.

Audience:

Educators, students, researchers, professionals

Domain:

Design History in Education and Practice

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Reflect more intensively on which objects and media should be considered within communication design, especially regarding screen-based work in computers, cinema, and television, and whether this constitutes a distinct area.

Audience:

Researchers, media scholars, communication designers

Domain:

Scope of Communication Design / Screen-Based Media

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Develop an updated taxonomy of design-object classes and typologies that is usable both by designers and by intellectual-property systems, so that registration and legal analysis are based on clearer object categories.

Audience:

Researchers, Designers, IP Offices, Educators

Domain:

IP / Design Classification

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Map the boundary between design and marketing in intellectual-property analysis, distinguishing what belongs to project authorship, branding strategy, and market communication.

Audience:

Researchers, Designers, Lawyers, Brand Strategists

Domain:

Design / Marketing Boundary

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Study the boundary between design and craft in intellectual-property terms, especially where authorship, seriality, manual transformation, and uniqueness overlap.

Audience:

Researchers, Designers, Artisans, Cultural Policymakers

Domain:

Design / Craft Boundary

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Define more precisely the boundaries between design, engineering, and architecture in intellectual-property protection, focusing on how technical, spatial, and formal contributions overlap within one project.

Audience:

Researchers, Designers, Engineers, Architects, Lawyers

Domain:

Design / Engineering / Architecture Boundary

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Low-Medium

Study the life span of design objects by area of intervention—from conception through use, obsolescence, and “death”—to calibrate more adequate protection durations and management strategies.

Audience:

Researchers, Designers, Policymakers, Businesses

Domain:

Lifecycle / Duration of Protection

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Identify the registration errors designers most frequently make across industrial-property mechanisms, explain why they occur, and use the findings to create better filing guidance.

Audience:

Designers, Lawyers, IP Offices, Educators

Domain:

Registration Practice

Scope:

Meso → Macro

Feasibility:

High

Build interoperable databases that cross-reference copyright records with industrial-property records, and also connect the different industrial-property mechanisms, so designers and examiners can detect overlaps, gaps, and conflicts earlier.

Audience:

IP Offices, Policymakers, Designers, Researchers

Domain:

Data Infrastructure / IP Systems

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Low-Medium

Study how intellectual-property education in higher design education affects designers’ later professional practice, especially their protection choices, contract literacy, and strategic use of IP.

Audience:

Educators, Students, Designers, Program Leads

Domain:

Design Education / IP Literacy

Scope:

Meso → Macro

Feasibility:

High

Create advisory supports—guides, clinics, or toolkits—that help designers choose the right protection mechanism, file registrations, and draft work/IP clauses in contracts.

Audience:

Designers, Small Studios, Design Associations

Domain:

Professional Support / Toolkit

Scope:

Meso

Feasibility:

High

Bring design thinking into educational domains to facilitate creative participation, holistic thinking, future thinking, and a project mindset within schools and learning communities.

Audience:

Educators, designers, schools, researchers

Domain:

Design Education / Ecological Literacy

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

High

Educate for human living within the health-maintaining and life-supporting processes of the planetary biosphere, engaging learners with spirit, heart, head, and hands.

Audience:

Researchers, educators, curriculum leaders

Domain:

Ecological Education / Planetary Literacy

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Reimagine the school as a root-based community of learning connected to place, extending learning into gardens, shelters, community spaces, cities, landscapes, forests, creeks, museums, and libraries.

Audience:

Educators, municipalities, community organizations, designer...

Domain:

Place-Based Learning / Community Education

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium

Reconnect compartmentalized knowledge to the essential needs of people and places so that learning, local economies, scientific advances, and local wisdom can be aligned more respectfully.

Audience:

Researchers, educators, policy actors, community leaders

Domain:

Knowledge Integration / Local Wisdom

Scope:

Macro

Feasibility:

Medium