scholarly journals Cracks in the Success Narrative: Rethinking Failure in Design Research through a Retrospective Trioethnography

2021 ◽  
Vol 28 (6) ◽  
pp. 1-31
Author(s):  
Noura Howell ◽  
Audrey Desjardins ◽  
Sarah Fox
Keyword(s):  
Design Research ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Research Reporting ◽  
Letting Go ◽  
Methodological Considerations

What can design researchers learn from our own and each other's failures? We explore “failure” expansively—turning away from tidy success narratives toward messy unfoldings and reflexive discomfort—through retrospective trioethnography. Our findings reflect on failures we identified in six past design research projects: issues of relational labor of deployment, mismatched designer/participant imaginaries, burden of participation, and invisibility of researcher labor. Our discussion contributes to broader reflections on shifting design research practice: (a) methodological considerations inviting others to engage failures through retrospective trioethnography, (b) letting go as a mode of research care, (c) possibilities for more candid research reporting, and (d) how centering failure may contribute to design justice by providing a technique for attending to harm and healing in design research practices. Throughout, we call for challenging success narratives in design research, and underscore the need for systemic changes in design research practice.

Research into Design-Research Practices

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Randall ◽  
Tobias Dyrks ◽  
Bernhard Nett ◽  
Volkmar Pipek ◽  
Leonardo Ramirez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Research Agenda ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Driving Forces ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Interdisciplinary Science

The aim of this chapter is to outline a research agenda. Here, this agenda has been termed “meta-research into practice-based computing”; the chapter uses the authors’ own work to exemplify elements of it. Such an agenda requires coherent framing and needs to be conducted in sufficient breadth and depth and so is still evolving. The chapter first presents some of the driving forces behind “post-normal” interdisciplinary science carried out in research consortia, as well as a methodological approach to performing ethnographies on research projects. It then describes two examples of meta-research performed by the Siegen group. Finally, the concluding part highlights the main insights from these projects, outlining a more detailed research agenda.

scholarly journals The principle of reflexive practice

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yoram Reich
Keyword(s):  
Design Research ◽  
Practice Research ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Guiding Principle ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Research Environments ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Exercise Design ◽  
Point Of Departure

‘Practice what you preach’ is a phrase occasionally used to refer to those not acting as they want others to act. There are countless opportunities in professional work and daily life to bring such criticism upon ourselves. While the subject is broad, this study focuses on the application of this idea in research practice, and more specifically in design research. One point of departure is the question: ‘how should we practice research if its results are products just like other products?’ The Principle of Reflexive Practice (PRP) states that considering the outcome of design research or research itself as a product, many design principles, tools, methods or knowledge are applicable to design research.A corollary of the principle is that in order to succeed in contemporary research environments, design researchers would gain significant benefit such as improving the success rate of their research projects, if they exercise design methods and tools in designing their research. By exercising these methods, researchers would gain quick and rich feedback about the methods they develop; they would become aware of issues that require users’ perspective that could not be possible without their own practical use.The PRP makes participants in design research aware of the reflexive opportunity in studying design that could be mobilized to advancing their practice and making their research results more effective. Notwithstanding, adopting the PRP is not easy; therefore, it is presented as a challenge to design research. Four examples of using the PRP as a guiding principle in research are presented to demonstrate its importance and benefits.

A study of practice based design research models from knowledge integration perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Honghai LI ◽  
Jun CAI
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Theoretical Basis ◽  
Knowledge Integration ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Two Dimensions ◽  
Design Knowledge ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Proposed Model ◽  
Design Innovation

The transformation of China's design innovation industry has highlighted the importance of design research. The design research process in practice can be regarded as the process of knowledge production. The design 3.0 mode based on knowledge production MODE2 has been shown in the Chinese design innovation industry. On this cognition, this paper establishes a map with two dimensions of how knowledge integration occurs in practice based design research, which are the design knowledge transfer and contextual transformation of design knowledge. We use this map to carry out the analysis of design research cases. Through the analysis, we define four typical practice based design research models from the viewpoint of knowledge integration. This method and the proposed model can provide a theoretical basis and a path for better management design research projects.

The laboratory life of a designer at the intersection with algal biotechnology

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marin Sawa
Keyword(s):  
Design Research ◽  
Imperial College ◽  
Collaborative Practice ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Close Collaboration ◽  
Algal Biotechnology ◽  
Interdisciplinary Design ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Laboratory Life

Scientific laboratories are increasingly becoming a collaborative place to design in an emergent biodesign practice, yet there is very little literature on the actual place and practice. This paper describes an empirical account of a laboratory-based, interdisciplinary design research practice, exploring the intersection with algal biotechnology. Aimed at generating multiple applications of microalgae, the author spent 3 years (2012-2015) working in close collaboration with algal scientists in their research laboratories at Imperial College London. It expounds on the laboratory space and facilities and discusses collaborative experimentation with the intersectional outcome: Algae Printing. It reports that the sum of resultant biotechnological artefacts are scientific, aesthetic, and ecosophical with potential for the domestication of algal biotechnology. It reflects on the interdisciplinary collaborative practice with literature reviews and addresses suggestions for future practices. The main finding is that the integration of a designer into the laboratory life can lead to co-invention and that a role of designer in early stages of scientific research can be demonstrated.

Methodological Considerations in Educational Research Using Serious Games

2010 ◽  
pp. 147-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Putai Jin
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Methods ◽  
Serious Games ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Simulation Game ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Methodological Issues ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Technology Tool ◽  
Methodological Considerations

The literature on using serious games for learning has been growing exponentially during the last decade. It is time to examine some methodological issues associated with this line of research. There is evidence that research on serious games, if designed with methodological rigor and executed properly, such as the serial studies of prisoners’ dilemma, modality effect in individual interactive learning, and changes in attitude toward mathematics in a computer-based simulation game, can be fruitful and have a profound, positive impact on learning and training. Since adopting serious games as an educational technology tool is by no means cheap, we should ensure that methodological issues are carefully considered before conducting a study on educational games. Whereas there are excellent studies in the existing literature of simulations and games, it is not uncommon for some studies to adopt convenience samples or own-control designs. Studies on serious games tend to be conclusive if they have used true experimentation, well-controlled quasi-experimental design, surveys with representative samples and validated instruments, comprehensive design research, or training programs having a pretest–posttest design with group comparisons. The potential values and informative contributions of using different methodologies for serious game research should be recognized because of the ecological relevance. Future research should pay more attention to randomized sampling, controlled but feasible research design, validity of instruments, appropriate analytical methods, and interdisciplinary or cross-disciplinary research to enhance the internal/external validity of various approaches. In regard to analytical methods, both quantitative approaches and qualitative evaluations, if applied appropriately, are considered as valuable, indispensable, and complementary to each other. It is hoped that this chapter can be helpful not only for future researchers in this field to design and execute rigorous projects but also for wider readership to understand and evaluate research outcomes in the discipline of serious games.

scholarly journals “Pocketing” Research Data? Ethnographic Data Production as Material Theorizing

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-119
Author(s):  
Christine Neubert ◽  
Ronja Trischler
Keyword(s):  
Research Data ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Data Production ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Temporal Dimensions ◽  
A Company ◽  
Over Time

We analyze the relations between ethnographic data and theory through an examination of materiality in research practices, arguing that data production is a form of material theorizing. This entails reviewing and (re-)applying practice-theoretical discussions on materiality to questions of ethnography, and moving from understanding theory primarily as ideas to observing theorizing in all steps of research practice. We introduce “pocketing” as a heuristic concept to analyze how and when ethnographic data materializes: the concept defines data’s materiality relationally, through the affective and temporal dimensions of practice. It is discussed using two examples: in a study on everyday architectural experience where ethnographic data materialized as bodies affected by architecture; and in a study on digital cooperation where research data’s materialization was distributed over time according to the use of a company database. By conceptualizing data’s materiality as practice-bound, “pocketing” facilitates understanding the links between data and theory in ethnographic data production.

Creativity in Multi Objective Problem Solving

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohamed E. M. El-Sayed ◽  
Jacqueline A. J. El-Sayed
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Modeling And Simulation ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Engineering Problem ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Multi Objective ◽  
Conflicting Objectives ◽  
Research Goal ◽  
Engineering Problem Solving

Problem solving is one of the main activities in achieving design and research goal. While problem solving in general is an activity aiming at transforming unacceptable state of reality to acceptable state of reality, problem solving in engineering is usually a means for tackling other activities such as design and research. By breaking down design and research into a set of engineering problem solving activities, the goals of complicated design and research projects can be achieved. For this reason, the transitions from design or research to problem solving in some cases are unidentifiable. The identification of the problem solving activity goals and the transition between the three activities, however, are essentials for creativity and achieving the desired objectives especially when dealing with conflicting objectives and constraints. In this paper, design, research, and problem solving are distinguished as realization activities performed in different reality domains with different beginning and ending states. These three activities use modeling and simulation as basic elements of mapping between realities to perform analysis and integration. While analysis and simulation are mainly the analytical actions, modeling and integration are mainly the creative actions. With these distinctions, the identification of problem solving activity goals, and transitions between activities, can be easily realized. Also, creativity and dealing with conflicting objectives can be greatly facilitated. To demonstrate these concepts and their implications some illustrative examples are discussed.

In-between practice: working in the ‘thirdspace’ of sensory and multimodal methodology

2011 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-292 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Hurdley ◽  
Bella Dicks
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Mixed Methods Study ◽  
Research Practice ◽  
Reading Practices ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Social Worlds ◽  
Sensory Ethnography ◽  
New Space

This article discusses how emergent sensory and multimodal methodologies can work in interaction to produce innovative social enquiry. A juxtaposition of two research projects — an ethnography of corridors and a mixed methods study of multimodal authoring and ‘reading’ practices — opened up this encounter. Sensory ethnography within social research methods aims to create empathetic, experiential ways of knowing participants’ and researchers’ worlds. The linguistic field of multimodality offers a rather different framework for research attending to the visual, material and acoustic textures of participants’ interactions. While both these approaches address the multidimensional character of social worlds, the ‘sensory turn’ centres the sensuous, bodied person — participant, researcher and audience/reader — as the ‘place’ for intimate, affective forms of knowing. In contrast, multimodal knowledge production is premised on multiple analytic gaps — between modes and media, participants and materials, recording and representation. Eliciting the tensions between sensorial closeness and modal distances offers a new space for reflexive research practice and multiple ways of knowing social worlds.

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