4.4 Framing the Potential

A Provisional Conclusion

4.4.1 Toward an Understanding of Design-oriented Research

The emphasis on ‘becoming’

Periods of design discourse have chosen to focus on being very analytical about the stages of the design process (the ‘research methods’ era in the 1960s, for example) and traces of this value system are still evident in the technical-scientific rationality of some fields where design researchers come from a more hard social science background. Yet it may be surmised that fixing the process of design was perhaps not the most appropriate subject for investigation, given the value system of a design practitioner (Coyne 2004). Even so, I have found myself throughout this research project making attempts to classify or categorise aspects of design praxis, since temporarily putting forward a position has proven, for me, a productive way to critique and examine the model under scrutiny. Still, I intentionally did not seek to make a case for design-led research with respect to theory construction.

Friedman can be read as patronising in his characterisation of designers who he derides as often confusing practice with research and criticises for their “misguided effort to link the reflective practice of design to design knowledge, and the misguided effort to propose tacit knowledge or direct making as a method of theory construction” (2003, p520). He asserts that taking this position is a dead end. I read Friedman’s writings as provocatively didactic in that he seems to enjoy setting up this divide between theory and practice, when this research is interested in the dialogue that engages theory with practice and practice with theory. Even as Friedman concedes that knowledge flows in both directions, you sense from his writings a belief that robust scientific knowledge of design will inform practice. In “Creating design knowledge: from research into practice” Friedman claims that: 
 The goal is a full knowledge creation cycle that builds the field and all that practise in it. Practice tends to embody knowledge. Research tends to articulate knowledge. The knowledge creation cycle generates new knowledge through theorizing and reflection both. (Friedman 2000, p13)
 Yet, the paper title and conclusion point to his investment in how research will direct practice. My interpretation of Friedman’s position is that he is searching for theories of design that, in Rosenberg’s language, seek “to build intellectual substance by trying to ‘grasp’ design… [so] it can be operated on analytically” (2007). My bias draws me to consider how knowing might flow in the other direction but I am not interested in the scientific act of constructing design knowledge that Friedman details.

Friedman makes a case for why explicit articulation is central to how we contrast theories and share them. 


The challenge of any evolving field is to bring tacit knowledge into articulate focus. This creates the ground of shared understanding that builds the field. The continual and conscious struggle for articulation is what distinguishes the work of a research field from the practical work of a profession (2000, p14).

As I increasingly came to recognise the possibilities-driven value of designing I began to value the discursive process of struggling to articulate more than I did the more analytical act of naming a fixed position. I agree with Friedman that it is “not experience, but our interpretation and understanding of experience that leads to knowledge” (p521) but I disagree with his interpretation of explicit articulation. Manzini stipulates that design knowledge has to be explicit, discussable, transferable and able to accumulate. Manzini qualifies his call for research to be explicit by saying that the knowing should be “clearly expressed by whoever produces it,” which is distinct from Friedman’s design science goal with its systematic knowledge and predictable results (p12). This research experience has led me to argue that it is possible to clearly express the potential of a practitioner’s insights while not presuming to lock in a specific interpretation of their value. What is of importance is the commitment to be explicit and open enough to ensure Manzini’s expectation that the knowing be discussable and transferable.

As a practitioner I have come to see the provisional nature of these critical frameworks as central to their currency. In this way my research study posits that the agency of a discursive, reflexive practice lies in appreciating that individual perspectives and background understandings should be subjected to constant negotiation and renegotiation. This allows tacit understandings to be examined and explicitly communicated for discussion without presuming that the initial explication is an attempt to fix a theoretical position. In fact, the ‘becomingness’ of figuring out new perspectives is central to a discursive act that acknowledges the appropriateness of leaving some questions unanswered… if not unexamined.

This chapter extrapolates from the case study, ‘proposing’ a model for design-oriented research in order to show-by-example how a practitioner might make a contribution to design knowing (in this case the discourse of design research). I recognise that this speculative approach is not constructing theory in the way Friedman is advocating for, yet I do see it as consistent with Manzini’s definition of design knowledge. I share Manzini’s interest in privileging how the designer-as-research would evaluate the appropriateness and relevance of the research by considering how useful it is to those who design. In this way he defines design knowledge as something that has more than abstract utility but as:


A set of visions, proposals, tools and reflections: to stimulate and steer strategic discussions, to be applied in a variety of specific projects, to help understand what we are doing or could do (2009, p12).

According to Jonas, the main epistemological problem of the discipline is shaped by design being “about what is NOT (yet)” (2007, p200). The interventions of this research project have never sought to pin down exactly what the projects were proposing, nor taken a definitive position on design. I make the connection here to Scrivener’s insight that “this is because the creative process is one of establishing the conditions for the realization of what has not been seen before, not one of thinking the thing out in advance” (n.pag). The emphasis is on the ‘becoming’ of the insights: on attending to the shift in perspective or the process of seeking corroboration. This is why my research has sought to move ‘toward’ an understanding, and why it is engaged in figuring as opposed to having figured out. My decision to allow the research to be about potential calls for it to resist theoretically locking-in a conclusive position. Yet this is about more than just acknowledging the design practitioner’s lack of interest in what is known and what he or she cannot influence. With the object of study focusing on the process of designing and researching, I have been regularly reminded of experiential, philosophical and practical reasons why it is appropriate to attend to the figuring act of becoming. Even with the interrogation of my own tacit understandings, I have come to appreciate that it is more relevant to explore the process of examining my assumptions than to permanently account for my position.

However, the research project is motivated by the broader ambition to develop a model whereby the practitioner as researcher can inform understandings of design praxis. One of the core negotiations of this research project is the ongoing attempt to navigate the push of a discursive model that seeks out new interpretations and perspectives with the pull of a critical model that can analyse and substantiate the knowing of the research. This puts in perspective why the act of interrogating one’s practice seems to be an ongoing commitment rather than a discrete exercise.

The Conversations of the Research

This dissertation consistently alludes to the reflective conversations that run through the research. The emphasis is on the conversations between the researcher and the situated context of the research project, whether that be at the level of designing a project or evaluating the direction of the research in general. However, the project could also be characterised as being in conversation with the work of Schön, Cross and Lawson. This research states from the beginning that its performative orientation resists the notion of theory led by practice, and yet as the research has evolved it is clear the extent to which the conceptual frameworks of this research build on the writings of these three theorists.

My conversation with Schön’s work on reflective practice is obviously the most immediate. Practitioner-researchers regularly cite Schön’s work as a way of legitimating their reflective practice. Scrivener’s recognises this connection for practitioners by noting the value of reflection with respect to studio practice:


“There is a positive relation between productive excellence, i.e., innovative artefact production and reflective practice; Reflective practice is a productive mode of personal creative development; Reflective practice yields practitioners who can give accounts of their work, which, e.g., explicate overarching theory, appreciative system and the norms used to evaluate the unintended and unexpected consequences; These accounts are a valuable resource for other practitioners and interested parties: providing, amongst other things, 'examples, images, understandings' (Schön, 1983:138) and strategies for action that other practitioners may employ to extend their own repertoires; Reflective practice equips practitioners to induct novices into that practice” (2007, n.pag).

In relation to the extensive body of scholarship that draws on Schön’s work, I understand the contribution of this research as directly examining, from a practitioner’s perspective, the ideas that Schön came to as an observer of design practice. I do not see this work as a critique or departure from the key ideas Schön posits, but as offering an insider’s perspective on how his ideas might be ‘tried on’ and explored in the context of individual research practice.

I do think that Schön overstates the reflective orientation of design, which is interesting when considered in the context of the literature on expertise. With reference to Dreyfus and Dreyfus’s research into stages of skill acquisition Young and Spencer consider the implications of associating mastery (high level expertise) with the ability to perform without conscious attention to the act. Wondering whether ‘mastery’ would deny the possibility of deep reflection by the design master Young and Spencer come at this from another angle by questioning whether “the real achievement…is the [expert designer’s] ability to reframe the overall activity in such a way as to create a challenge” (p155). Here their proposition is similar to my argument for amplifying back talk, as they question whether this reframing would productively require the designer to maintain a commitment to reflection-in-action. My counter to Schön’s emphasis on reflection is to offer the more nuanced notion of speculation-led reflection. In positioning the relationship between reflective practice and design research this research simply adopts Schön’s notions of framing, repertoire and reflective conversations. The contribution of this research to this field is the notion of amplifying the back talk of practice to access a deeper level of reflective enquiry. My proposition of why and how a designer-researcher might do this offers a strategy for generating rich practice-led observations that can inform the scholarship of design research.

My conversation with Cross is more complicated. This dissertation would have been infinitely more difficult to write if I had not read Cross’s scholarship about the cognitive expertise of designers. On the one hand, I could flippantly say that when I read Cross’s descriptions he was only putting into words what I already knew — yet I now recognise the sheer importance of accounting for the expertise that designers often only tacitly know. So I could describe my relationship with Cross superficially, as if the primary merit was the vocabulary his scholarship offers. Yet, more than that, Cross’s scholarship has motivated me to want to contribute. The subject this research seeks to investigate shares a domain with the field that Cross has shaped. The disciplined conversation Cross refers to is the subject I also wish to explore, as I set out to better understand design expertise, designerly knowing and design thinking. Yet Cross and I have a fundamentally different methodological orientation to the discipline of design. This helps to explain why the methods and assessment of the research Cross cites seem at times to dismiss the values and perspectives a practice-led approach would bring to this subject. So even though his work directly engages with the conversation I want to be a part of, his singular praise for protocol studies does not seem to promote his own interest in recruiting more practitioners to engage with research. I feel a productive ambivalence toward his scholarship: I am grateful for the terrain he has mapped and frustrated by how transparently it signals my sense that the practitioner is absent from the scholarship that defines the domain of design. I would see my theorising about the negotiations of practice and the concept of speculation-led reflection as simply framing in a different way many of the ideas Cross has already articulated. But I see that my contribution to the discussion of design expertise could be valuable with respect to the diagrams in this dissertation. For as insightful as Cross’s scholarship is at accounting for designerly ways of knowing, I believe my diagrams potentially present a more appropriate way of engaging the practice community of academics into a conversation about designerly ways of knowing.

If I were to imagine I really was in conversation with these three theorists, then Lawson would be the person I most appreciate talking to. It is not the ideas behind Lawson’s scholarship that I am responding to, but the orientation of his scholarship that I respect. Whereas Cross gives the impression of writing for other design theorists, Lawson makes it obvious that he is writing for the design practitioner. His commitment to communicate what is often unspoken in design education and to ensure that the scholarship be accessible to students and educators alike aligns with many core ambitions of this project – albeit tackled from a completely different perspective. With every new book, Lawson attempts to find new ways to ensure the practitioner’s voice is heard – with repeated quotes throughout the text. I perceive the anecdotal entries at the beginning of the sections in this dissertation as presenting the kind of critical first-person observation of practice that Lawson integrates into his scholarship. With respect to how we share and communicate complex notions of design praxis, I see that my research seeds the possibility of the practitioner-researcher being more than just the voice in pull quotes. My research foreshadows, the potential for publications, such as the model of Architectural Design Research, that frame practice-led perspectives of design praxis through designing and writing (Allpress and Otswald).

4.4.2 The Transferability of the Model

Summary of the Model’s Characteristics

One way to conceptualise the design-oriented research model presented in this dissertation is to characterise the design projects as the push to the unfamiliar and the reflection-based interventions as the pull to what we know and what we can build upon. In this way, a design-oriented approach to research values the speculative space of exploring through the process of designing and the reflective space of provisionally fixing into words the practice insights so they can be actively discussed with peers. This is a multifaceted approach to researching praxis that calls for a rigorous level of reflection, confession and candour, yet never strays far from its practitioner roots.

The following briefly summarises the key attributes of the design-oriented research model that emerged from this study. The attributes draw attention to how the designer thinks, practices and acts, and are intentionally connected to the three frames introduced at the beginning of this chapter.

The first set of attributes focus on the way a designer-as-researcher thinks. Namely these attributes of the model are built on notions of design thinking, specifically as it is manifested through amplified reflection, creative negotiation and explication of previously tacit knowing. The common element within this set of attributes is study’s commitment to reflection. To think like a researcher, this approach not only requires the practitioner to be more attentive to the back talk from these reflective conversations, but also calls on him or her to externalise what is for many designers an internalised dialogue.

The second set of attributes focuses on how a researcher practices. Committed to the relevance of supporting designerly ways of knowing the foundation for design-oriented research needs to build a model with methods that are appropriate for a practitioner-researcher. The primary method may be design practice, but the model relies on an approach that allows the designer to work iteratively, switching between multiple modes over an extended period of time. The discipline of noticing supports the close reading of practice, and the action research cycle ensures a form of engagement that promotes change and the need to revisit and redirect a project as new understandings emerge.

The third set of attributes specific to the model is related to how a researcher acts. The integrity of the design-oriented model builds on the integration of speculative and reflective methods, allowing the co-evolution of the research problem and potential propositions, The design projects are the primary locus of activity, and the social contexts of multiple practice spaces can further consolidate the feedback loop between the researcher and his or her peers. The model addresses the importance of observing practice from outside of designing by introducing a speculative element within the reflection-based interventions.

These integrated sets of attributes begin to illustrate what is distinctive about my approach to researching. The reflection is integrated within and sustained by the entire research program. My practice-led projects intentionally manipulate a designer’s propensity for projection – to dive deeper into the examination of the situation. The inclusion of reflection-based strategies introduces various methods and research artefacts to intensify the interrogation of the insights that emerge. My commitment to explore our understandings of design from a practitioner’s perspective led my research methods, where possible, to being adapted to work with the agency of design and the expertise of the designer. These hybrid methods – part design-led and part reflection-based – predominantly fall into the framing category of the research study. The commitment to embedding reflection in all phases of the research and the development of the hybrid framing exercises together define this design-oriented approach.

In this model the reflective conversations can be characterised as the central nervous system of design-oriented research, requiring the practitioner-researcher to recognise that for every activity undertaken there are reflections sparked, messages sent and connections made. Such a research approach requires the designer to become conscious of the negotiations when designing and to recognise the value of his or her expertise.

The Primary Propositions and Key Understandings

My model has been conceived to provide an approach for the reflective practitioner motivated to interrogate his or her own practice – with the goal of translating the insights that emerge from practice into a broader discussion of design praxis. The rationale for my project broadly frames the desire among practitioners within the academy to participate in and help direct the academic discourse that surrounds the domain of design. With the project broadly focusing on the importance of designers being more cognisant and articulate about the expertise they bring to a situation, my research specifically explores the potential for design-oriented research to investigate a practitioner’s tacit understandings of practice as a first step toward being able to make explicit the agency of design.

To this end the characteristics of the design-oriented model describe how the designer educator might use the inherent attributes of his or her studio practice to enhance reflective research practice. The ways a designer proposes, makes and reflects have all contributed to shaping my model of practitioner research. The multiple-method and multi-modal character of design-oriented research is a direct consequence of the solution-proposing nature of designing and the material expertise of the practitioner.

When stating the research questions in chapter 1.3, I acknowledged that the various components of this research project addressed these questions by attending to the domain being investigated (reflective practice and design), the methodological orientation (design-oriented research) and the community of practice (design education). The following table, with reference to these components, summarises the principle findings of this study by acknowledging how practice insights framed research questions that led to design propositions and ultimately transformed my own understandings.


Rather than being prescriptive, the design-oriented research approach outlined here intentionally speaks to the principle of the model. This invites the practitioner-educator to potentially customise an approach that would build on his or her personal strengths. I can only speculate as to whether the model really has the potential to increase the capacity of the practitioner-educator to represent his or her perspective in scholarly conversations about design. However, I can account for how the understandings I have of design that inform this thesis are almost all a direct consequence of undertaking this research. The many hunches with which I began this project have been slowly overturned, and I find myself completing this dissertation able to declare many positions about design practice that I once only tacitly understood. Being cognisant of my own expertise as a designer has significantly changed the way I contribute as a teacher and academic administrator. The following presents specific examples of how these newfound understandings have changed my perspective.

Knowing how I might navigate a new situation has enhanced my capacity to draw on my design expertise in interdisciplinary settings. Specifically, I have observed that in collaborations I am articulate about how I can contribute and comfortable with defending my speculation-led reflection approach to situations.

Having a vocabulary for articulating a designer’s expertise has allowed me to assert a practitioner’s perspective in theoretical conversations about design with respect to future curricula. This was of particular relevance in discussions when the degree program did not fall under the domain of any one field of design (i.e. a PhD in Design and an MFA Transdisciplinary Design). I could extrapolate from my communication design experience and articulate graduate attributes while still acknowledging the primacy of the design project.

Being able to propose a critical framework by which practitioners can understand their potential role as researchers has directly informed the research culture of my institution. Perhaps the most instrumental shift is the use of this model as a basis for workshops for faculty and courses on design-led research for students. The research model appears challenging and the orientation relevant enough to motivate faculty to consider the transition from practitioner to researcher.

Perhaps most significantly, the deeper understanding I have of design expertise and how to use these attributes to promote critical reflection has transformed not just how I think of the content of design education, but also how we should go about teaching. I recently taught my first ever theory course and the students were very responsive to the inclusion of proposition diagram assignments as a speculation-led reflective strategy for their theory course.

Limitations and Reservations about the Model


I intentionally refer to a tentative thesis and a design-led proposition, as the research model I put forward essentially exists in the realm of potential until other practitioner-educators examine and explore the approach for themselves. However, it is worth noting the limitations of a model that presents the negotiative process of reflective practice research in design as essentially a tug of war between opposing forces. The following acknowledges the real challenges of negotiating the ‘back talk’ between the designer and the design, the research audience and the situation he or she is designing into.

The first reservation is concerned with skill and inclination – specifically whether this approach is an ‘appropriate’ fit for all designer educators. This reservation is related to the capacity or openness of the researcher and the audience to be deeply reflective. The process worked for me, and I believe worked for my peers who chose to actively engage with the challenge of internally reflecting on their biases and assumptions. Yet for the audience members who sat silently it was less clear to me whether they were introspectively examining their own understandings or simply passively observing the negotiations. I also recognise that I am inclined toward reflection, and so am drawn to the discipline of noticing. However, it is clear that the reflective-practice orientation of this model would fail to resonate for designers not interested in the core objective of interrogating their own practice.

The second reservation is less about capacity and more a criticism of the recursive nature of the model. The iterative reframing of the research subject and the sometimes-overwhelming negotiation of multiple approaches and practice spaces resulted in the project taking many turns and arguably extending its duration. You could argue that amplifying the back talk created too much chatter to meaningfully respond to. There were times when the opportunistic capacity to redirect the research was invaluable, yet conversely it never seemed an efficient way to research. The iterative, situated nature makes me question how relevant the model would be for addressing a clearly defined research question.

For most of the research project I was only tacitly deploying the model that is articulated here. I can speculate that some of the reservations might be addressed by reducing the perception that each new insight was critical to explore. I noticed that once I more explicitly understood the pitfalls and potential of the multiplicity approach, I was able to make more strategic decisions about when and how to pursue new insights. Now that I more explicitly understand the potential and limitations of the reflective approach, it would seem constructive to more thoughtfully structure the reflective conversations with the self and with others. Over time I became more disciplined in my own internal conversations – in how I structured the back talk – but I am not sure how much this discipline came from practice or an explicit understanding. By intentionally diversifying strategies for reflection and discussion it would be possible not just to access new personal insights but also to better facilitate the discussions with peers. Shumack’s paper potentially provides an approach for structuring conversation with the self as other “with the aim to introduce new thinking about diverse viewpoints and points of consent or disagreement” (Shumack 2009, n.pag).

4.4.3 Possibilities for Future Research

Moving on from the concrete observations of how design-oriented research might operate, these concluding remarks consider the potential this model presents for future research.

The methods frame calls into question the way researchers from other design fields would adapt the research interventions to align with their particular material expertise. The visual orientation of this research illustrates how diagnostic diagramming or the visual/verbal interplay of a presentation are productive, but it would be valuable to see the insights that might come from an architect: for example, adapting a reflection-based intervention to accommodate his or her spatial expertise. With respect to research by non-practitioners, it could be informative to have qualitative assessments of the kinds of insights generated by the acts of designing, writing and discussion. Better understanding the contribution of the different activities might inform the practitioner-researcher about when and why to use specific research methods.

The integrity frame emphasises the hybrid modes and discursive nature of visually and orally communicating the research. It would be interesting to observe how practitioners from other design fields would adapt this notion of multi-modal framing exercises – beyond the examples of diagnostic diagrams and the predominantly graphic nature of the presentations I designed in relation to my background. Beyond the idea of different expertise in visualising and communicating content I can imagine different modes of driving discussion: for example, a more participatory approach to the design process, and/or working collaboratively. The social interactions of these approaches might also be investigated to evaluate their potential for ensuring ongoing corroboration and consultation of the insights that emerge.

The reflection frame also brings into question how figuring would manifest itself in other design fields. By extrapolating the negotiations of figuring with respect to creative practice in general, one can begin to imagine how another design field might challenge the creative tension of studio-based practices. This research might provide a framework by which to create similarly discursive artefacts for practitioner-researchers interested in critically interrogating their own tacit understandings of practice and perspectives on design. From a completely different perspective, it could prove informative to consider how a social scientist would go about corroborating (or not) the outcomes of this research. Protocol analysis might disclose interesting observations about how and when understandings emerge in a research program designed specifically to amplify and externalise the reflective back talk of practice. Similarly, qualitative research could evaluate how effective or ineffective the intentionally discursive process of corroborating insights is for engaging a research audience into reflecting upon their own understandings of design.

For my own practice, I hope to build upon and further refine the toolkit of research activities that work to my expertise and sharpen my critical reflection. I spent too much of this project being simultaneously wary of the limitations of design-led reflection-in-action and dismissive of evidence-based research that ignored the designer researcher’s expertise. I am no longer interested in this binary tension and have come to respect the multiple types of knowing different research orientations offer. If as a community of educators we can come to understand how productive it might be to talk across the different disciplinary orientations that contribute to research into design, then we might come to respect how theories of design would be enriched by a diversity of methodological perspectives.

I found the intensity of my model to be an excellent training ground for refining my own discipline of noticing, but I am now curious to investigate a subject other than my own practice. Even with this shift in research subject, I maintain my interest in exploring how qualitative methods can be appropriated to work with a designer’s expertise. At the end of this dissertation I find myself less interested in advocating for one kind of research and more motivated to consider how ethnographic insights, clinical trials, philosophical arguments and conceptual models can collectively propose not only what design is but transform what design might come to be.

EPILOGUE – Post-project Reflection 


I am compelled to write this epilogue six months after I submitted my PhD for examination, because I feel that distance from the project allows me to give a concrete example of how the research project has changed my professional practice and how this has subsequently led me to question my privileging of reflective practice.

In preparing material for my oral examination I looked back to my initial review of candidature when I first entered the PhD program. As I read the statements I presented nearly eight years previously I was struck by how they imply that I tacitly understood some of the key insights that the case study went on to disclose.

The first sequence of phrases began with: I like contradictions / I like putting ideas in boxes / I like when they don’t fit / I like thinking of why. These self-reflexive observations show a nascent understanding of the idea that there is a core tension within design practice and that I recognise this as a productive, engaging tool for reflection. I then went on to say: I like ambiguity / I like sitting on the fence / I like that there are more than two sides to every story / I like learning from talking. It would be another five years before I would explicitly come to recognise that the visual language of the proposition diagram succeeds in amplifying the back talk of design because it is intentionally ambiguous. But on some level these words forecast the possibility of a multi-modal approach to research where multiple perspectives are valued for their capacity to create the discursive environment necessary for deep reflection.

If I look back at a book chapter I wrote the month I enrolled in the PhD program I am struck by how I struggle to articulate the design process as anything more than a serendipitous process. I didn’t know about co-evolution of the problem and solution, and back then I would have turned my back on Cross’s criteria for research rather than engage in proposing a redefining of the criteria by arguing for how design praxis could be accommodated. I make these observations because the move from tacit to explicit understanding begins to address the question of whether this research has informed my capacity to lead academic conversations about design. I can say that I no longer relate to the tongue-tied practitioner I describe in the initial reflective account that introduces this dissertation.

This transformation in my practice is most evident in a project I worked on soon after submitting my PhD. I was co-convenor of a conference on PhDs in Art and Design in a country with no history of practice-led PhDs. The experience was empowering because it demonstrated how my capacity to articulate a position on practice-led research allows me to a) facilitate conversations between the design philosophers and the design practitioners; b) ensure that the designer’s voice is not marginalised in the PhD conversation; and c) motivate studio-based faculty to consider the contribution they can bring to a research context. But the experience was also enlightening because the conference planning and discussions helped me to see how my bias had led me to simplistically pit practice against theory, situated knowing against abstract knowing. I have come to respect that there are project-grounded ways to practice being a design-led researcher that need not revolve around reflective practice, protocol studies or design philosophy.

With few practitioners’ voices represented in the discourse surrounding theories of design praxis I had not paid enough attention to the community of practice-based researchers actively working on applied projects. The model at the institution where I was a PhD candidate had led me to focus on the designer-researcher who sought to advance the sub-field of design by way of reflecting on his or her own professional mastery. I should have focussed more on design researchers who work in interdisciplinary collaborations since this community has already established methodological approaches that respect the practice expertise of the designer while allowing the assessment component of the research to be evaluated by other measures.

I find it hard to get past a general desire to advocate for design-oriented research, but I now found myself less invested in asserting the emphasis on reflective practice. During the PhD conference I found myself not pushing for a practice-led PhD pathway, but for a thematic curricular model that allows researchers from a diversity of epistemological orientations to be explore research topics alongside one other. This research experience has taught me to recognise the limitations of design and to acknowledge the reflective insight that can come from stepping outside of design. For even though the research is grounded by the projects, and the propositions did emerge from the situated investigation — the design projects alone could not achieve the central purpose of the research to generate new knowing about design in general. My practitioner’s appropriation of the discipline of noticing worked because it relied on interventions that called on me to step outside of the immersive process of designing. In listening not just to the back talk of designing, but also to the back talk of researching I have come to appreciate how (perhaps, not unsurprisingly) I learnt as much about designing by appropriating reflection-based research methodologies from other disciplines.