The Design Doctoral Consortium (DDC) is a platform for students pursuing PhD in Design to showcase their work and get critical feedback from distinguished design research scholars. We invite PhD students working in all areas related to design to apply for this unique opportunity. You can apply to the DDC irrespective of the stage in your PhD dissertation process. 

Who should apply?

If you are enrolled in a Design PhD programme with a Unversity and your topic, you can apply for the consortium. As a proof, you must submit a bonafide certificate or your institute ID Card. All kinds of students are invited: Full time/ Part time/ External/ Joint programmes/ Self-financed

Why should you apply?

• Primarily to gain feedback on different aspects of your PhD–topic, method, results, writing, and discussing the PhD life. 
• PhD is a difficult journey. One needs to express their thoughts broiling inside them after immersing and absorbing dense literature. It provides an occasion to articulate your topic in front of a relevant audience.
• Lastly, it is an opportunity to connect to design scholars–seniors and budding–through the consortium.
• It is free!

Show your interest by filling up this form. This is a mere Expression of Interest and students will have to submit their proposals separately.

The process of DDC 

• Submit the expression of interest form (takes 3 minutes). This is a mere Expression of Interest and students will have to submit their proposals separately.
• Prepare and submit your proposal (750-1500 words) 
• Reviewers shortlist the proposals for feedback. You get written feedback irrespective of your selection.
• Selected proposals are clustered thematically into categories. 
• Participants prepare the final presentation. 
• Participants present their proposals in DDC at IDC on 4th and 5th March. A detailed discussion on the proposal follows the presentation.

Confidentiality of submission document is maintained during the review process. All rejected submissions will be kept confidential in perpetuity. All submitted materials for accepted submissions will be kept confidential until the start of the conference. 

Submission Guidelines 

Participants are expected to write and submit a) 750-1500 words proposal (non-anonymised) explaining their research and b) a one page expectation-contribution document on what do you expect from the consortium.

Proposal Details

Usually, following aspects are covered in the proposal, however, depending on your stage in PhD, you may want to detail certain sections more than others. 

• Title 
• Abstract (~150 words) 
• Introduction and motivation that drives your dissertation research 
• Related work: Background of key works that helped you answer your research question(s) (at least partially), but also explain why your work is still needed 
• Research gap, Research question(s)/objective(s)/goal(s) or hypothesis: What is the research gap that your research aims to fill? 
• Work done so far: Design of Pilots, mini projects, dip tests, etc., and their results
• Proposed method and expected outcomes : Method for your main study
• Questions to the panel: What do you want to discuss with the assigned panel?
• References (they do not count towards the word count) 

Template for proposal submission

Expectation and Contribution Document

This is a one page document with following details (in no specific order):

• Two paragraphs about your background. This includes information about your enrolled PhD programme and your PhD supervisor (Name and email address). Attach a bonfide certificate or an image of your identity card at the end of this document.
• A paragraph about what do you expect from the consortium and how will it help your PhD
• A paragraph about ways in which you can contribute to the consortium

Please make sure that you have the two documents ready—Proposal and the Expectation and Contribution Document—before the beginning the submission. The two documents have to be separate files.