3. The Discussion

This chapter details the methods that drive the research. If chapter two focused on the ‘action’ component then this chapter narrates the ‘research’ component by introducing the critical framework that links the various reflective strategies. These research interventions into the design-led orientation of the visualisation projects play a key role in structuring the reflection, on and in practice (Schön 1983). Scrivener describes how “each institution’s approach to practice-based research is in essence an experiment and both the advocates and participants in the experiment need to engage critically and reflectively with all of its aspects” (2004 n.pag, my emphasis). Addressing the need for the design community to be investigating the potential and pitfalls of research through practice, this chapter undertakes two levels of reflection. The first level accounts for how the case study was undertaken – by auditing and reviewing the research methods. This narrative assesses the utility of different tactics for disclosing new ideas about design praxis. Mindful of how the reflective strategies complement the process of designing, the first sections examine what these methods do. Taking the reflection up a level, the chapter moves to questioning not simply what the strategies do but what they achieve. The first level of reflection discloses the extent to which the multiplicity of perspectives is constructive, the second level proposes why the kaleidoscopic multiple method approach works for the designer-researcher. Linking the importance of design as a negotiative act to Schön’s notion of back talk, the chapter concludes by contemplating the potential of research tactics to amplify the reflective chatter of design research.

In evaluating the research methods adopted, the assessment is always anchored by consideration for the audience. This leads to a modification of specific approaches to engage directly with the visual/material expertise of the designer. In addition an evaluation of research methods strives to consider how the overall research program can support the co-evolution of the research problem and proposition as a consequence of engaging in a material conversation with the research situation (Schön 1983). This bias toward engaging the design educator interested in practice-led research draws attention to the motivation behind the third key research question: which research tactics and strategies might encourage a practitioner to more deeply reflect on and share his or her tacit understandings of design?

3.1 The Multi-faceted Profile of Design-oriented Research

This research project has led me to recognise the value of practice-led research to understanding and refining my own professional mastery. On multiple occasions, I have noticed the influence of this communication design research on my studio practice and my teaching. Yet, for reasons already mentioned in the research rationale I chose to use the grounded communication design projects as the means-to-an-end for exploring the potential of practitioner-led research. Even though this research engaged in the broader domain of design, the practice-led approach ensured that it directly influenced my practice as an academic administrator and researcher. However, the objective of this research requires that I consider the research beyond the influence it has on my own practice and challenges me to interpret the research experience in a way that might inform others understandings of design practice.

As a practitioner, I have been reflecting on the design process involved in the case study, while additionally reflecting on how I am thinking and acting as a researcher. This calls for micro-reflection on what the case study discloses about the process and practice of design, and macro-reflection on how the research approach facilitates broader insights about design research itself. In order to engage in these multiple tiers of reflective activity I needed to both maximise my reflective designer skills and also introduce new analytic tools.

The design experience is one that, for many, is already concerned with multiple readings, multiple possibilities and holding multiple ideas at once. Embracing the multiplicity of design practice, I have developed a research program that supports multiple practice spaces, research methods and modes for communicating the research. This chapter discusses why all these elements are key to the model of design-oriented research embodied in the case study.

3.1.1 Multiple Phases and Multiple Methods

The case study reveals that the negotiations of creative practice can be amplified to create a more discursive space for reflection. This new understanding highlights the value of the propositional act of designing being in constant conversation with the more explicitly contemplative act of writing or verbalising. Even though the visualisations of the case study work with a range of design-based strategies to heighten the interrogative agency of designing (namely, the proposition diagram and the practice of figuring) a more extensive toolkit of exercises is required if the case study insights are to advance more than my own understandings of design practice.

Returning to the four-part research cycle of propose > make > discuss > reflect, it becomes possible to quickly evaluate at what phase in this cycle research insights emerge. The case study can be characterised by the following research cycle: proposing a multi-faceted research program; making visualisations across diverse contexts; engaging peers to discuss the relevance of the insights; then reflecting on what this means for the research project and the next design move. It is worth noting that many of the new understandings that emerged did so during the ‘discuss’ and ‘reflect’ phases of this cycle. Yet that is in part simply because they point to the more discretely discursive phases of the research experience. The cyclical nature of returning to propose and make more visualisations underscores that the situated design experience will always play a critical role in informing research outcomes. In this way, the design artefacts are always in conversation with and often frame the discursive acts.

Given these different phases of research activity, a range of research strategies are required. I have referred throughout this dissertation to the multiple-method approach of the research, in part because I began as such an advocate for a very design-biased approach. But for all the obviously new methods tried – for example, the grounded theory – it has also been a revelation to closely examine the design experience and recognise how everyday practitioner activities such as presenting and critiquing design work present highly discursive spaces for sharing and corroborating new observations.

Yet through the research experience I also came to recognise the value of stepping outside my comfort zone and working with methods that seemed at times to draw on expertise antithetical to my own. Given that my disaffection for academic writing and reading influenced my initial interest in liberating the practitioner-researcher from writing, it has been important to find a way to not suffer through the whole experience of writing the research papers and the dissertation. However, by perceiving writing as a potentially discursive, open-ended and propositional practice has allowed me to find a way into writing.

The diagram below emerged from a noticing-driven visual exercise where I deployed the coding practices of grounded theory research to classify the activities undertaken in support of the PhD in a variety of ways. The different ways of grouping and visualising the activities informed the discussion in this chapter. This includes more than just the primary methods; it provides a list of everyday activities that would otherwise go unseen, such as supervisory conversations and design critiques. This particular diagram revealed the rhythm of the PhD over the period of eight years.

3.1.2 Multiple Frames and Multiple Perspectives

Working across and between multiple research activities calls for a researcher to embrace the challenge of repeatedly seeing the work anew. This negotiation of various modes of inquiry is perhaps most evident in the case study when conceiving of how to present the work to others for critique. The deliberative act of designing hybrid text/image artefacts to communicate the research with others underscored the extent to which the various multiple approaches were essentially about framing multiple perspectives. This suggests that in adopting a multi-modal approach for the research presentations a practitioner-researcher can productively generate new ways to reflect upon his or her research – and offer different ways into the research for the audience.

Designers tend to consider a ‘problem’ from the perspective that there is no single answer – only possible solutions. To this end, designers use their evaluations of a design proposition as a strategy for opening up the design situation. The cognitive expertise required to evaluate these possible solutions calls for the designer to be skilled at holding in his or her mind multiple considerations of the situation (a range of contingencies, potential ideas, practical constraints, et cetera). This propensity to continue to put forward alternative propositions is an essential part of how the designer negotiates the process of reconciling the material, aesthetic, functional, social and/or economic conditions a design situation presents (Cross 2009, Lawson 2004). The point being made here is about the designer’s comfort with tackling a research project from multiple angles.

The designer’s capacity to iteratively search for the right way to frame a project is a valuable skill to bring to researching when the subject is as unquantifiable as design praxis. Design-based methods provide a critical platform by which to reflect upon the subject at hand, but it is the designer’s ability to exhaustively frame and reframe the design problem that allows for a comprehensive understanding of the design situation to emerge. It is not simply a question of oscillating between writing and designing that provokes new insights; it is the private iteration of rewrites and work-in-progress designs that allow a practitioner-researcher to consider his or her topic from multiple fronts. Ultimately, the exercise of coming at a design project, a conference paper or a research topic from various angles allows for new ways of seeing the design or research situation. My research experience suggests that it is the process of using multiple frames that leads me to clarify my own base understandings of design praxis. If a designer is already comfortable with recasting how he or she sees a design situation, then perhaps it is also easier to accept a new interpretation of a visualisation or to shift his or her perspective on design within the research process.

The following diagram, the second to emerge from the grounded theory exercise of examining the research activities, highlights the different practice spaces and the pattern of designing, writing and framing activities. This visualisation of the activities shows how the visual essays and visualisation studies are supported by different activities, and yet both rely on the critical framework constructed by the institution. This diagram also reveals the parallel activities undertaken in my academic role that have given me further pause to reflect and frame the potential of design research.