Theme 5: Design research (Reflection)

It feels like I have suffered from writer's block this week. And I have not been able to attend none of the lectures of this week, which does not make it easier to write this reflection. However, my course mates have informed me of what issues were raised at this week's lectures. The two papers that we read last week as a preparation for the design research theme brought many new issues to mind. Especially, after have been reading the blog posts by my course mates to glean more information about it.

One thing that surprised me was the statement that the design concept itself could serve as enough empirical data in a study. As far as I am concerned, it is important to gather a lot of data as it increases the validity and reliability. In general, I believe there is a fear of generalizing and therefore of not having enough data. If you instead ignore huge user studies, focus groups, interviews, cross-nation surveys with a large number of respondents, you can release time. Thus, a new lesson is that qualitative methods within design research do not have to be limited to the most common evaluation methods. Instead you can simply observe a concept or design based on your own prior research and expert knowledge, that will be accepted by the research community.

I remember that I enjoyed reading the research paper written by Haibo Li and his colleagues. It had a straight forward structure and a logical chain of thought, which made it easy to follow the text, even though the content was quite advanced. Now that we are approaching the end of the course and have been reading a lot of different research papers I have come to one conclusion. In the end it does not matter what you have done, if you do not manage to convey it in an interesting way. To convey the message in a clear and interesting way is an important part of communication. Not all researchers succeed to do so.

I really wish I could have attended Li’s lecture. As I understand, the lecture was a hands-on approach on how to conduct ‘successful research’ and how to monetize your research. As he suggests, you have to be good at foreseeing things. For example if the idea is a breakthrough technology, if the timing is right or if the idea will serve to solve a real problem. In order to do so, I believe you have to master many different areas, be analytical and understand how the world works, at various levels. Also, he stresses that a great researchers spend more time to analyzing and defining the underlying problem. By doing so, it is easier to come up with a solution that is truly successful. As I was mentioned before, the most important thing in communication is to convey a clear message. Prototyping can be helpful when to sell an idea.

Finally, it is interesting to discuss the which forces that are behind the research. Is it commercial gains that forefront of science forward, or knowledge-based gains? How will this affect the research in future? Will there be a less wide research area? Will the quality of research increase or decrease?