Prof. Luke Feast is an Assistant Professor in Product Design at PolyU Design. His current research interests are creativity, specifically how master of design students demonstrate cognitive adaptability when creating new ventures and how doctoral students demonstrate epistemic autonomy when creating new knowledge. These research projects ask the same question: how can we tell when someone has learned to think for themselves? He approaches this research question through philosophical argumentation, social science research, and educational measurement.

He holds bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in design, as well as a graduate diploma in social science research and a master's in higher education. He has collaborated on faculty-level curriculum development that received a Vice-Chancellor's Commendation for Teaching Excellence. Prof. Feast is a dedicated teacher who has taught design at universities in Denmark, Finland, Australia and New Zealand.

Prof. Feast welcomes prospective PhD candidates whose proposed research aligns with his research interests and with the projects detailed below. Strong enquiries pose a clear research question grounded in the design research literature in design entrepreneurship or doctoral education; propose an empirical or systematic research method; and explain how the proposed research aligns with his work. Prof. Feast is not the right supervisor for research whose main contribution is reflection on the candidate's creative practice, or for product or application development without a robust research question. He reads every enquiry but can only reply to those that are a good fit for his research interests and projects.

Design Entrepreneurship

Prof. Feast studies design entrepreneurship as the creation of a venture through the co-evolution of the situation, problem, and solution. This standpoint extends the theory of problem-solution co-evolution by treating the situation, meaning the product, finance, and labour markets, as a third element that both shapes and is shaped by design reasoning. This active project records expert venture founders and partners at design firms as they think aloud through venture creation scenarios. The expert data is used to ground a GenAI tutor, which is then compared with a general-purpose GenAI tutor. The experiment tests whether the expert-grounded GenAI tutor builds design students' cognitive adaptability or induces cognitive surrender. Prospective PhD students proposing a research topic aligned with this project should have a background in both entrepreneurship and design. Suitable PhD topics: Design and entrepreneurial cognition; protocol analysis of design experts; ethnographic studies of professional design practice; educational measurement of design thinking.

Doctoral Design Education

Design doctoral education lacks consensus on the degree's purpose. This active project argues that doctoral design education should educate independent researchers who contribute new knowledge to the field. This requires developing both research competencies and intellectual virtues. Particularly important is epistemic autonomy: good judgement about when and how to advance one's own standpoint and when and how to rely on others' testimony. Additionally, doctoral students should develop the capacity to make wise choices among valuable but incompatible alternatives. This project investigates how autonomy qualifies graduates to act as stewards of the discipline, capable of conserving, generating, and transforming design knowledge. Prospective PhD students who propose a research topic aligned with this project should have a background in both education and design. Suitable PhD topics: doctoral education in design; epistemic autonomy in doctoral education; aims of doctoral education; educational assessment; design knowledge.

Previous Projects

In addition to his current research projects, Prof. Feast has conducted research projects on design ethics education; sustainable design and the circular economy; collaborative design; and culture-based innovation.

• PhD in Design, Swinburne University of Technology
• Master of Education (First Class Honours), Auckland University of Technology
• Master of Design (Distinction), Victoria University of Wellington
• Graduate Diplomas in Arts (Social Science Research), Victoria University of Wellington
• Bachelor of Design (Industrial Design), Victoria University of Wellington