research interests
Bilgen Tunçer has been working as an Associated Professor Dr. and researcher at Bahçeşehir University. She has dedicated her work at the intersection of economics and design, more specifically industrial design and design management in academic life and professional business practices.
She has received her BID, MSc and PhD from Istanbul Technical University Graduate School of Engineering and Technology, Department of Industrial Product Design in Turkey. Her research focuses on the role of design capability in innovation, various patterns of design management capability development in GVCs, strategic use of design, and her earlier research on the use of design audits. She had referee experience and reviewed articles in “The Design Journal”, “Design Research Conference 2022, Bilbao Unesco City of Design”, and “Design Culture(s)-Roma 2021”.
As her master’s and Ph.D. focus on the value of design for businesses as a competitive tool, she has personal interest in social and transformative aspects of industrial design through which new user practices, social settings, and daily routines can be structured and restructured. She has published an article in the Design and Culture Journal (AHCI Index, Q1) in which the creation of new user practices, social settings, and daily routines have been explained and discovered through practice theory, industrial design, and innovation.
In her articles, published in high-quality scientific design journals, she put forward frameworks. She has developed the “Design Capability Model for Innovation” (in The Design Journal – AHCI Index), in which industrial design, engineering design, and design thinking are clearly defined according to the Oslo Manual 2018 report (published by OECD/Eurostat) and current literature on industrial design and innovation. The case study of this article is based on her with a global manufacturer Alarko-Carrier in designing condensing boilers and boilers that also brought co-patent with engineers and design registration to her.
In her Ph.D., she has developed “Design Management Capability Framework in Global Value Chains” based on a literature review in design management and development economics. The model has been tested, revised, and developed through case studies from the white goods industry and published in another article (2021), “Design Management Capability Assessment from The Perspective of Companies Pursuing Different Business Strategies in Global Value Chains”. Case study research provides to develop the self-assessment tool by which companies would be able to position themselves on the framework regarding the strategies they follow in local and global markets.
While working as an Associated Professor in Bahçeşehir University, she have been collaborating with many manufacturing companies from diverse industries such as Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning, Boat/Yacht Building, Aluminium Accessories,..etc. as an industrial designer and design consultant. Being a full time design researcher and Professor at Bahçeşehir University has enabled to transfer her academic and professional knowledge to new generations.
teaching philosophy
Bilgen has been conducting many courses in undergraduate programme including “Industrial Design Studio III”,” Design Management”, “Sea Vehicles Design”, and “Strategic Design” in graduate programme of “Industrial Design and Innovation Management”.
In strategic design courses, she aims to teach the value of design for businesses as a competitive tool, the integration of design into an organizational structure that embraces different levels of design management, namely operational, functional and strategic levels; design-driven innovation, and design audits.
As a lecturer, facilitating communication and collaboration amongst students have been her primary goals to motivate young generations toward gaining new knowledge and increasing synergetic relationships to trigger their creativity in design studios.
Since design has become a more interdisciplinary field placed at the core of digital technologies, manufacturers, users, and many stakeholders; being a leading, compromising, and valued team member has gained more significance. Therefore, she has conducted group projects in design studios and her elective course sea vehicles design (above picture).
In design courses, she aims to teach a design methodology that can be applied to any kind of industry and project from the theoretical perspectives of design, economics, and social sciences. Designing user practices within the frame of the human-centered design approach enables to development of sociotechnical systems in which new daily life scenarios can be generated and developed. The systemic approach to design comprises not only products but also embraces new user experiences, technologies (IoT), and design paradigms such as design-driven innovation, sustainability, slow design…etc. dependent on the conceptual approach of a project.
For example, she has been conducting Design Studio III with her colleagues focusing on developing Smart Product Service Systems in which students can propose new systems, products, and user experiences (examples are available in my pdf portfolio) in the existing socio-technical system. Additionally, she has offered a sustainable do-it-yourself furniture project in the curriculum that enables students to develop design projects to be sold as online. Users can buy and download the project and its user manual to produce it in local producers by benefiting CNC, or 3D printer technologies and acquiring readily available sustainable materials. Since the scope of the project comprises new processes, ideas, and skills, it can be considered as “transition design” in terms of suggesting to reduce the volume of mass production by embracing local and environmental solutions.
She thinks that design education should be responsive and constructive to the changes in the external environment such as the economy, ecology, and technology. Therefore, to make a difference in design education, she has prioritized following and contributing to up-to-date theories in design and related fields while enhancing relationships with companies from different industries to enable collaboration in design studios.
For example, in 2020 when they conducted online courses during the Covid-19 Pandemic, she has initiated a project with Ersa Furniture, one of the biggest office furniture manufacturers in Turkey, which concluded with the production of the selected projects. In 2021, she and her colleagues have collaborated with Fakir Small Medium Appliances (German brand Fakir was bought by a Turkish holding). In 2022, she has initiated a collaboration with a jewelry company, Goldenline brand, based in Istanbul for the 3rd grade industrial design studio. As the output of these collaborations have provided design registrations to the university, students, and lecturers, they have also enabled internship and full-time employee positions for our students. She has strong skills as a lecturer in terms of being curious, open to new developments and collaborations.
publications
Bilgen Tuncer – Google Academic
Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B. (2023). “How Should Technology Follower Companies of Developing Countries Innovate Through Design Capability?” In Ciravegna, E., Formia, E., Gianfrate, V., Sicklinger, A., Zannoni, A. (Eds.), 8th International Forum of Design as a Process Disrupting Geographies in the Design World (pp. 668-78), DIID: Bologna University Press. DOI: 10.30682/diiddsi23.
Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B. (2022). Design Capability and Innovation (Tasarım Kabiliyeti Ve İnovasyon: Gelişmekte Olan Ülkelerin Teknoloji Takipçisi Firmaları Nasıl İnovasyon Yapmalı?) H.Y. Çoğun, Z. Karacagil and S. Kızılyıldırım (Eds.), Current Debates in Natural and Engineering Sciences 4 (Doğa ve Mühendislik Bilimlerinde Güncel Tartışmalar 4) (pp. 453-475). Bilgin Kültür Sanat Yayınları.
Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B. (2022). The Role of Design Capability for Achieving Innovation in a Technology Follower Company: The Case of Boiler Design. The Design Journal, 25:4, 696-716, DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2022.2083365
Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B. (2022). Practice Theory in Industrial Design and Innovation: Materials, Meanings, and Competencies of Electric Wringer-Washers in Turkey from 1950 to the 2000s. Design and Culture, 14(1), 69–91. https://doi.org/10.1080/17547075.2021.1966732
Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B., and Er, Ö. (2021). Design Management Capability Assessment from the Perspective of Companies Pursuing Different Business Strategies in Global Value Chains. METU Journal of the Faculty of Architecture, 38(2). https://doi.org/10.4305/METU.JFA.2021.2.10
Manzakoğlu, B. T. and Er, Ö. (2018). Design Management Capability Framework in Global Value Chains: Integrating the Functional Upgrading Theory from OEM to ODM and OBM. The Design Journal, 21(1), 139–161. DOI: 10.1080/14606925.2018.1395577
Türkmenoğlu Berkan, S. and Tuncer Manzakoğlu, B. (2016). Evil Eye Belief in Turkish Culture: Myth of Evil Eye Bead. The Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art and Communication, 6(2), 193–204.
Özlem Er, Alpay Er and Bilgen T. Manzakoğlu. Design Management: Definiton, Scope and Application (Tasarım Yönetimi: Tanım, Kapsam ve Uygulama), TÜSİAD Copetitive Strategy Series 13, Publication No: TÜSİADT/ 2010,12;508.
Manzakoğlu, B. and Er, Ö. (2015). “Design Management from the Perspective of Functional Upgrading in Global Value Chains”, The Value of Design Research, 11th International European Academy Of Design Conference Abstract Proceedings, APRIL 22-24 2015, Paris.
Manzakoglu, B. and Er, Ö. (2009) Investigating the Effects of Organizational Culture on the New Product Design Understanding and Structuring of Companies, by Using ‘Design Audit Tools. Design and/or Crisis (Tasarım ve ya Kriz), 4. National Design Conference, İTÜ Architecture Faculty, pg: 253-271.