The Design Research Society was founded in the UK in 1966. The origins of the Society lay in the Conference on Design Methods, held in London in 1962, which enabled a core of people to be identified who shared interests in new approaches to the process of designing.
The purpose of the DRS, as embodied in its first statement of rules, was to promote ‘the study of and research into the process of designing in all its many fields’. This established the intention of being an interdisciplinary, learned society. The DRS promoted its aims through a series of one-day conferences and the publication of a quarterly newsletter to members.