Overview of Design Research

Overview of Design Research

understanding of a phenomenon
phenomenon may be created as opposed to naturally occurring. The phenomenon is typically a set of behaviors of some entity(ies) that is found interesting by the researcher or by a group

knowledge that allows prediction of the behavior of some aspect of the phenomenon.

The set of activities appropriate to the understanding (knowledge) are its research methods or techniques.


Design
Design deals with creating something new that does not exist The outer environment is the total set of external forces and effects that act on the artifact. The inner environment is the set of components that make up the artifact and their relationships –

In following the flow of creative effort types of new knowledge that arise from design activities and the reason that this knowledge is most readily found during a design effort will become apparent.

In this model all design begins with Awareness of a problem.

Design research is sometimes called “Improvement Research” emphasizes the problem- solving/performance-improving nature of the activity.

Suggestions for a problem solution are abductively drawn from the existing knowledge/theory base for the problem area

Awareness of the Problem, is indicated by the Circumscription arrow. Conclusion indicates termination of a specific design project.

New knowledge production is indicated in the Circumscription process is especially important to understanding design research because it generates understanding that could only be gained from the specific act of construction.

Circumscription is a formal logical method which assumes that every fragment of knowledge is valid only in certain situations.

The Outputs of Design Research

four general outputs for design research:
constructs, models, methods, and instantiations.

Constructs
The conceptual vocabulary of a domain

Models
A set of propositions or statements expressing relationships between constructs

Methods
A set of steps used to perform a task – how-to knowledge

Instantiations
The operationalization of constructs, models and methods.

Better theories
Artifact construction as analogous to experimental natural science


The Philosophical Grounding of Design Research

Ontology is the study that describes the nature of reality: for example, what is real and what is not, what is fundamental and what is derivative?

Epistemology is the study that explores the nature of knowledge: for example, on what does knowledge depend and how can we be certain of what we know?

Axiology is the study of values: what values does an individual or group hold and why?


Design research by definition changes the state-of-the-world through the introduction of novel artifacts.

Design Research Methodology (by Example)

Awareness of Problem:
An awareness of an interesting problem may come from multiple sources: new developments in industry or in a reference discipline. Reading in an allied discipline may also provide the opportunity for application of new findings to the researcher’s field. The output of this phase is a Proposal, formal or informal, for a new research effort.

Suggestion: The Suggestion phase follows immediately behind the proposal and is intimately connected with it as the dotted line around Proposal and Tentative Design.

after consideration of an interesting problem a Tentative Design does not present itself to the researcher, the idea (Proposal) will be set aside.

Suggestion is an essentially creative step wherein new functionality is envisioned based on a novel configuration of either existing or new and existing elements.

The step has been criticized as introducing non-repeatability into the design research

method; human creativity is still a poorly understood cognitive process. However the step has necessary analogues in all research methods; for example, in positivist research creativity is inherent in the leap from curiosity about an organizational phenomena to the development of appropriate constructs that operationalize the phenomena and an appropriate research design for their measurement.


Development: The Tentative Design is implemented in this phase. The techniques for implementation will of course vary depending on the artifact to be constructed.

An algorithm may require construction of a formal proof. An expert system embodying novel assumptions about human cognition in an area of interest will require software development, probably using a high-level package or tool. The implementation itself can be very pedestrian and need not involve novelty beyond the state-of-practice for the given artifact; the novelty is primarily in the design, not the construction of the artifact.

Evaluation: Once constructed, the artifact is evaluated according to criteria that are always implicit and frequently made explicit in the Proposal (Awareness of Problem phase). Deviations from expectations, both quantitative and qualitative are carefully noted and must be tentatively explained. That is, the evaluation phase contains an analytic sub-phase in which hypotheses are made about the behavior of the artifact.


Conclusion: This phase is the finale of a specific research effort. Typically, it is the result of satisficing, that is, though there are still deviations in the behavior of the artifact from the revised hypothetical predictions, the results are adjudged “good enough.”

“firm” - facts that have been learned and can be repeatably applied or behavior that can be repeatably