1.4 A Critical Framework for Researching Practice

An Introduction to the Research Program

Within the context of academic research, Cross (2007) makes the case for why we need more designer-researchers: people who can bring their experience to bear on research into practice. Within professional practice there is a parallel call for workplace practitioner-researchers who use practice-based strategies including action research, reflective practice and case studies as a model for continued learning and advancing a designer’s practice (Jarvis 1999). The speculative and applied studio projects of this case study works with the expertise of the practitioner in both an academic research and applied professional context. The interlacing of designerly and reflective methods further reinforces this project’s interest in generating different ways of seeing.

1.4.1 The Documentation

There are two components to the documentation of this research program. The primary volume is the dissertation: the document you are currently reading. This text builds out the research subject by contextualising, reflecting upon and discussing the case study within the project. Chapter two begins with a comprehensive documentation of the practice-led projects and practice-based strategies that comprise the visualisation case study. Subsequent sections offer a close reading of how the design-oriented research case study was undertaken, paying close attention to how ideas moved through the research from initial hunch to developed research outcome. Chapter three reflects upon the research practice that emerges from the case study, discussing and identifying the research activities in relation to a practitioner’s expertise. In this way a practitioner approach to researching practice begins to emerge. Chapter four pulls out from the case study to frame the potential of design-oriented research by accounting for: the methods undertaken; the attributes the designer brings to the act of researching; and the role of reflection. In conclusion, I make a case for the critical and discursive potential of design-oriented research.

The companion piece to the dissertation is a website that documents the visualisation case study. This allows the reader to view the case study as a discrete body of work. For even though the case study ensures that the research experience is grounded in practice, it is critical to recognise that the PhD project is ultimately not focused on the case study’s detailed account of what I will call the productive ambiguity of the proposition diagram. The ‘project’ component of this PhD is not limited to the design projects, but also includes the artefacts of the overall research experience: the design work, the writings and the research framing exercises. Therefore, the website archives a sample of the visualisations, academic papers, research presentations and weblog posts. The primary project components are documented in the dissertation, so the full range of activities on the website do not need to be engaged with comprehensively. Yet, their inclusion as the artefacts of this research allows the reader to more closely examine the multiple methods that shape the design-oriented research program.

Consistent with Findeli’s characterisation of project-grounded research, the ‘project’ of this research is critical to the situated investigation – yet it does not represent the central purpose to generate new design knowing (1999). By documenting the project work on the website I am making explicit that in the end the projects play a support role to the knowing that emerged from the practice experience being discussed and reflected upon in the dissertation.

The dissertation has been designed so that the reader can filter the narrative to focus on the three main elements of the dissertation: the diagrams, the reflective accounts and the dissertation discussion. The diagrams affirm that the process of designing maintains its conversation with the research discussion right up until the end of the PhD. The reflective accounts that introduce most sections adopt the style of writing developed in the research blog to reiterate the ongoing reflective conversation that has driven the research project. The dissertation represents the final step in this process, where the research experience is analysed and communicated.

Together, the dissertation, the website and the PhD exhibition comprise my final submission for this PhD by project.

1.4.2 The Research Program

The primary empirical component of this research project is the case study. This ‘case study’ shares limited characteristics with the notion of the case study as a research methodology. Consistent with the conventional understanding of case study, the project presented is situated in a professional practice context where the researcher negotiates the tension of a project that converges and diverges as evidence unfolds. Similarly this context calls for repeated revision of the research question and the use of multiple methods that require the researcher to view the situation from diverse perspectives. However, in this case the data was not generated from the interview and archival evidence typically used to build theory in case studies – as the sole investigator was an insider researching her own practice (Eisenhardt, 1989). Still, the reflections on and interpretations of the projects comprising the case study are the primary focus of the PhD discussion. Within this there are two main bodies of project work; and a distinction is drawn between the speculative, design-led projects and the more reflection-oriented research activities.

The Design-led Research Methods

Out of two distinct practice spaces of the case study, two different bodies of work have emerged: the visual essays and the visualisation studies. The visual essays are produced within a practice space that is always understood as research space. By contrast, the visualisation studies are not primarily framed as research, as they emerged from my professional work and represent an informed applied practice space. Together, these two contexts for creating visualisations represent the studio-based, communication design work that comprises the design project component of this PhD.

The case study could either be framed as a research project located within professional practice or as professional practice critically framed by a research program. Both are accurate accounts. In the beginning I was undertaking a project-based doctorate where the research projects were conceived, designed and disseminated predominantly to an international community of critical practitioner-educators. Over the duration of the project however, my everyday professional practice began to assimilate what I was learning from the research projects, and subsequently the applied institutional practice began to drive the research projects. When I refer to the design projects, I mean the visual essays designed for the PhD and selected visualisations from my professional practice as an academic administrator. There are additional areas of practice tangentially that have informed my work – such as my teaching and design consultancy work – but these are not submitted or theorised in relation to this project.

In presenting the research-oriented and professionally oriented projects together, I draw attention to the importance of the reflective-conversation-with-the-situation that enables me to observe and recognise that these seemingly discrete practice spaces in fact represent one integrated practice (Schön 1992). The visualisation studies of my professional practice provide a more industrial context (albeit still within the academy) by which to apply and illuminate the purchase of the parallel research-led visual essays. This practitioner-researcher approach enables a sustained critical praxis (Jarvis 1997), making it possible to iteratively evaluate the relevance of the research for my peer community. The following table introduces the two distinct, but related communication design practice spaces:

Reflection-based Research Interventions

Circling the design projects are the writing and framing activities undertaken as a form of reflection-on-action (Schön 1987). Haseman refers to these qualitative methods that inform research on practice (Frayling’s research into practice) as practice-based strategies (as opposed to the practice-led strategies of performative research). He identifies the reflective practitioner and action research as examples of research enterprises that are concerned with the improvement of practice, if not led by practice (2003, p3). Haseman may classify some of the methods within this project as practice-based, given that they provide the primary place for research on practice – the place where I evaluate the project work. However, the tactics are still undertaken by the practitioner-researcher and have been appropriated to align with the epistemology of practice. I refer to these research activities as interventions to acknowledge that as research tactics they are in conversation with the design practice while intentionally not being part of the design practice. This allows these disruptions to the central research method of designing to play a complementary and critical role in understanding what emerges from the studio-based practice spaces.

There are many possible permutations from which a design-oriented approach to researching practice could be modelled. Distinct from the approach this research proposes, it would be possible to model a research program that draws on complementing the design research enquiry with social science-oriented research interventions (Fig. 2). Participatory design, cultural probes and strategies such as visual ethnography could well be adapted to align with a designer’s expertise, specifically if his or her practice has placed a greater emphasis on understanding or observing the needs and experiences of the user (for example, an industrial designer). However, the orientation of this research focuses on the humanities end of practice-based methodologies, specifically adopting a reflective-practice approach to researching design.

The activities loosely fall into two categories: writing and framing. The writing activities include the blog, academic papers and the dissertation, and the research framing activities include noticing-driven visual exercises such as the diagnostic diagrams, visual audit wall and the designed research presentations. Methodologically, both categories present a space for the designer-researcher to reflect upon the insights generated by the projects and consider ways of articulating and negotiating the research to peer communities. These tactical exercises reflect upon not just the knowing generated by designing the visualisations, but also the insights that could be gained from examining the overall design-oriented research of the case study. Whereas one conference presentation may focus on what the visualisation case study reveals about productive ambiguity, another exercise, such as the notice-driven pin-up, works with a visual audit of my whole practice as a way to evaluate the meta-narrative of the research project. Narrative enquiry is one of the key research methods used throughout this PhD, as it presents a strategy that supports the knitting together of these different experiences. More than just a description of events, narrative enquiry helps to facilitate the sense-making enquiry required to negotiate the diverse personal and social experiences of this kind of study (Clandinin and Connelly 2000). Together these research exercises call on me to step away from the process of designing to explicitly notice the back talk generated by the designed artefacts, the research situation and the conversation with the audience. In this way the supplementary reflective activities play a critical role in validating the contribution of the research.