4.3 Framing the Reflection

The role of reflective practice in researching design

In chapter 3.3 I outlined how reflective conversations within a design led research practice can lead to newfound understandings. Working with these understandings, this section concerns itself with identifying the tiers of reflection within this research project. I propose that the different reflective modes allow the practitioner-researcher to find the right frequency for each reflective conversation and therefore to tune in to the back talk of the research practice.

4.3.1 Attending to the Chatter

Dorst and Lawson deploy the idea of presenting multiple perspectives of design to paint a comprehensive picture of how we might understand design. One of the frameworks presents a model of design where design practice is understood as operating on four levels; beginning at the ground level of the specific design project and working through to the top level of the design profession (Dorst and Lawson 2009). I reference this model of design because it helps conceptualise how the reflection of design-oriented research operates, and potentially frames the areas of design research about which the practitioner needs to be critically reflective. The first level describes the activity that revolves around a specific, situated design “project”, acknowledging that the majority of student assignments simplistically frame design education in relation to the project. The second focuses on the design “process” and how a designer might work across a range of projects, drawing attention to how reflection-on-action might disclose patterns to the designer of how he or she approaches certain situations. “Practice” represents the third level of activity and deals with the reflection and experiences that inform the professional practice of a designer. For example, this might include a particular social commitment or professional area of specialty. The fourth level of activity in the taxonomy is the “profession”; this draws attention to the activities that influence how the profession is defined and understood.

For the purposes of my research, it is useful to propose a fifth level of activity on which a designer and/or researcher can contribute to understandings of the domain of design. This research project’s ambition is to consider approaches to research whereby a practitioner could examine his or her ‘practice’ of design – by undertaking projects and reflecting on his or her process. It does not just intend to advance how the specific profession (such as fashion design) defines itself, but also to consider how these insights might contribute to how we understand the domain of design in general. Inevitably, the individual practitioner-researcher is probably the person who will benefit the most from this reflective transaction, yet even positioning my research as seeking to make a contribution beyond the practitioner’s own mastery and that of his or her professional field does call for an additional tier of reflective engagement.

The reflective conversations of chapter 3.3 focus on the strategies that seek to deepen the reflection when the designer is in conversation with the design, the audience and the situation/research. The diagram at the beginning of this section works with a typology I introduced in chapter 1.5.2, when accounting for how this project’s reflective conversations intersect with Schön’s various descriptions of reflection.

‘Project-driven reflection’ is concerned with reflection motivated by the design-based activities: specifically, the amplified reflection-in-action promoted by protracting the negotiations of designing. This is the level of reflection that might be found in a critical practitioner. The ‘reflection-on-practice’ tier is reflecting on the design experience through writing. This activity parallels the reflection of professional practice – albeit in an academic context – whereby a reflective practitioner stops to question (often by way of interview, presentation or publication) what makes his or her practice distinctive. In making these reflective insights explicit a designer can begin the process of identifying how to build on his or her expertise. ‘Research-framed-reflection’ is specifically defined by the research context, so is distinct from the reflections of professional practice. Scrivener identifies this step in a creative practice research PhD as “post project reflection,” the phase when the researcher reflections on the action and practice of the overall project (2004, n.pag). The ongoing reflections that emerge from the act of framing, and the discussions the activities foster, draw on the particular commitment in design-oriented research to hybrid activities that deploy the multi-modal expertise of the designer. ‘Reflection-on-research’ steps back further to engage in a reflective conversation with the overall research situation. The focus is more on evaluation-led reflection than speculation-led reflection, and leads the practitioner-researcher to an understanding of the research and how to communicate its potential. Scrivener has also noted the relevance of this reflection-on-reflection step as the phase when the researcher critically reflects on his or her reflecting (n.pag). The difference with Scrivener’s framing of all these steps is that he positions them sequentially, whereas this research approach promotes iterative reflection throughout the study.

Considering these tiers of reflection with respect to other approaches to research-through-design, it is possible to imagine a research practice that predominantly focuses on the activities highlighted in tier one and two. Some research degrees would not consider the final act of dissemination as a discursive or reflective act; it is more a moment by which to fix and assert the research outcomes. The third and fourth tiers – research-framed-reflection and reflection-on-research, respectively – identify the essential reflective conversations with the research situation that underpin design-oriented research. These reflective conversations are driven by the framing activities that define the inclusive and discursive nature of the reflective practice yet design-oriented approach I model in this PhD. I see this approach as distinct from other observation or theoretically-framed modes of enquiry that observe the designer in action; the process of reflecting on my own practice offers a new perspective.

4.3.2 Negotiating the Tensions of Creative Practice

A close examination of my case study design experience produces the understanding that in disrupting the everyday negotiations of designing, a researcher may open up a space for enhanced critical reflection. At the local level of enquiry, the conversations between the designer and the design, the situation and the research audience, are more direct and therefore easier to manipulate. For this reason, the experiential, situated practice of designing presents a useful research method by which to interrogate the academy’s understandings of design praxis. Close examination, in the case study, allows me to notice the tension the visualisation practice evokes. This tension is played out: first, by the material conversation between the designer and the conflicted visual language of a proposition diagram; and second, by the discursive conversation between the ambiguous artefact and the engaged audience. Even the analysis of the key characteristics of the transactional visual practice helps to direct me to what is transferable about the communication design experience. I have observed how the situated learning that comes from speculatively putting forward an idea is productively countered by the temporary fixing afforded by the diagram. In addition, I have realised that this speculative yet reflective approach to designing seems suited to exploring provisional content that resists definition and respects multiple perspectives. In learning the value of drawing stakeholders into the conversation, the visualisation practice also signposts the importance of how the designer frames and shares material to ensure a critical, discursive space for reflexive engagement.

In the model of design-oriented research put forward here, the tension of the research practice comes from the extensive negotiating required by the tiers of reflection identified above. The meta-reflective conversation with the overall research program is drawn to listen and respond to the back talk of the practitioner-researcher. To make attending to the reflective conversations that run between the designing, writing and framing exercises more second-nature for the designer-researcher, the reflection-based interventions are inflected with or understood in relation to a designer’s sensibilities. This makes it possible to enact reflection through the designerly move of proposing a solution. Subsequently, this speculative orientation accommodates the practitioner-researcher reflecting on what he or she knows – not by focusing on what is already explicit, but by exploring the not-yet-explicit sides of his or her practice.

Design-oriented research seeks to trouble the push and pull negotiations of designing as a strategy to increase the occurrences and intensity of engaged reflective back talk. I underscore the term ‘negotiate’ to emphasise that it is more than just extending the amount of time the designer is engaged in the process of figuring out his or her next move. Protracting the design experience may result in the practitioner-researcher having a more sustained period of reflection, but just as importantly, the goal of ‘troubling’ the centripetal/centrifugal tension is to notice what is being negotiated. For it is at the intersections between the tiers of reflection above that insights advance from simply being noticed to being elaborated on and provisionally corroborated.

To disrupt how a designer regularly designs or researches is to draw attention to what is now a less familiar (and consequently more conscious) creative experience. Focusing on the core negotiations of practice that push and pull the designer to weigh up possibilities draws attention to the thinking-through-making space at the heart of design practice. This is the space where the designer will weigh many thoughts and possible moves as he or she proposes and evaluates the potential of multiple frames from alternative perspectives. Metaphorically, troubling the negotiations of practice appears to be about tuning into the stations that are broadcasting the reflective conversations of practice. Amplifying the back talk of a research practice appears to reference the need to turn up the volume so the chatter is harder to ignore.

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Ultimately, these tiers of reflection are simply a framework by which to account for the rhizomatic, opportunistic and reflective conversations that ran through my research program. They identify a way to temporarily fix for discussion the activities and contexts that motivate the reflective conversation. In much the same way, the diagrams in this dissertation seek to provisionally define the productive tension of the centripetal/centrifugal exchange (fig. 7) or map the dualities that embody the negotiations of design practice (fig. 10). In design-oriented research, the academic literature similarly provides a series of critical frames for the researcher to try on. For example, the act of reworking Schön’s vocabulary, or considering how this research project lays over Dorst and Lawson’s typology of design activities, is a productive exercise if the practitioner-researcher understands these critical frames as new propositions to be critiqued and evaluated with respect to whether the ideas resonate with his or her experiences. Schön describes how the ‘frames’ of design practice provide a reflective tool by which the practitioner can examine, by proposing, not just the problem at hand, but also his or her own practice (1983).