Style of thinking of Design research (1)

They say that planning is important for a PhD thesis. Above all, setting up a research question is the key.

Defining your research question(s) is probably the most important step to be taken in a research study, so you should be patient and allow sufficient time for this task (Yin)

I feel that the mode of thinking leading up to the research question is very intrinsically important.

To put it simply, it seems to me to be a repetitive movement of going back and forth between “questions” and “oceans of knowledge”.

We ask hypothetical questions and plunges into a sea of academic knowledge to see if the questions are really meaningful. We will repeat this again and again to brush up on the question.

This is similar to the so-called “design thinking” process, isn’t it? After all, both design work and scholarly inquiry work can be seen as an iterative process of back and forth, an essential way of thinking for creative and meaningful outcomes.

This is especially true in design studies.

In particular, the study of design is said to be “different from other sciences”.

The question is, is design a “science” in the first place? However, design research is characterized by the fact that it is often exploratory rather than hypothesis-testing, as is the case in the natural sciences and many social sciences.

As far as research methods go, qualitative analysis is more of a trend than quantitative analysis. Recently, Mixed Method Apprarch, which combines both quantitative and qualitative methods, has been advocated in design studies, but design studies is essentially exploratory in nature.

This characteristic of design studies would be closely related to the relationship of design studies, which studies design activities themselves.

(1) Research design phase / (2) Execution phase / (3) Integration phase

And this iterative exercise seems to apply to each phase of academic design research as well.

In other words, there are three phases: (1) Research Design Phase, (2) Execution Phase, and (3) Integration Phase.

I’m still in the trial and error phase of 1).

Also, my friends around me are trying to explore the theme in phase 1).

The commonality between so-called “design thinking” and design research (academic) has come into view.

I feel some things about the way of thinking of design research, so I will write about it from time to time.

Ciao grazie!