Qualitative research primarily is inductive in its procedures
"qualitative inquiry is inductive and often iterative in that the evaluator may go through repeated cycles of data collection and analysis to generate hypotheses inductively from the data. These hypotheses, in turn, need to be tested by further data collection and analysis. The researcher starts with a broad research question, such as 'What effects will information systems engendered by reforms in the UK’s National Health Service have on relative power and status among clinical and administrative staff in a teaching hospital?' [48].The researcher narrows the study by continually posing increasingly specific questions and attempting to answer them through data already collected and through new data collected for that purpose. These questions cannot all be anticipated in advance. As the evaluator starts to see patterns, or discovers behavior that seems difficult to understand, new questions arise. The process is one of generating hypotheses and explanations from the data, testing them, and modifying them accordingly. New hypotheses may require new data, and, consequently, potential changes in the research design."
(Bonnie Kaplan and Joseph A. Maxwell, p.38, 2005)
Kaplan, B. and J. Maxwell (2005). Qualitative Research Methods for Evaluating Computer Information Systems. Evaluating the Organizational Impact of Healthcare Information Systems. J. Anderson and C. Aydin. New York, Springer: 30-55.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Interaction design research artefacts intended to produce knowledge
"We differentiate research artifacts from design practice artifacts in two important ways. First, the intent going into the research is to produce knowledge for the research and practice communities, not to make a commercially viable product. To this end, we expect research projects that take this research through design approach will ignore or deemphasize perspectives in framing the problem, such as the detailed economics associated with manufacturability and distribution, the integration of the product into a product line, the effect of the product on a company’s identity, etc. In this way design researchers focus on making the right things, while design practitioners focus on making commercially successful things.
Second, research contributions should be artifacts that demonstrate significant invention. The contributions should be novel integrations of theory, technology, user need, and context; not just refinements of products that already exist in the research literature or commercial markets. The contribution must demonstrate a significant advance through the integration. This aspect of a design research contribution makes particular sense in the interaction design space of HCI. Meteoric technological advances in hardware and software drive an aggressive invention of novel products in HCI and interaction design domains that are not as aggressively experienced by other design domains. While product designers might find themselves redesigning office furniture to meet the changing needs of work, interaction designers more often find themselves tasked with inventing whole new product categories.
Our model of design research allows interaction design researchers to do what designers do best: to study the world and then to make things intended to affect change. Our model provides a new channel for the power of design thinking, desired by many disciplines, to be unleashed as in a research context. Design researchers can contribute from a position of strength, instead of aping the methods of other disciplines as a means of justifying their research contribution."
(John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, Shelley Evenson, p.500, 2007)
John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson (2007). "Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI". In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (CHI '07). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 493-502. DOI=10.1145/1240624.1240704 http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1240624.1240704
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design: Prototyping
"As design-led and practice-based research institution, CIID has expertise in directly engaging with design and technological materials to produce prototypes. Prototyping is at the center of CIID’s design culture; it provides us with the methods and means to probe future scenarios, situate design discourses and test design and technical implementations in real world contexts. Our prototyping methods range from simple paper based co-creation props to functional physical prototypes of complex systems. In addition, video scenarios and various experience prototyping methods are employed, in the early stages of our research, in order to bring forward surprisingly foundational insights about the “role” a technological object or system may have in the real world. Overall, insights derived from all prototypes feed back into our research process to re-iterate over its concepts or focus. With clear probing or prompting goals, we can better use sketches in materials, hardware and software to think and communicate about research, technologies and their societal impacts."
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A development in culturalist theorizing
"This article works out the main characteristics of 'practice theory', a type of social theory which has been sketched by such authors as Bourdieu, Giddens, Taylor, late Foucault and others. Practice theory is presented as a conceptual alternative to other forms of social and cultural theory, above all to culturalist mentalism, textualism and intersubjectivism. The article shows how practice theory and the three other cultural-theoretical vocabularies differ in their localization of the social and in their conceptualization of the body, mind, things, knowledge, discourse, structure/process and the agent."
(Andreas Reckwitz, 2002)
Andreas Reckwitz (2002). "Toward a Theory of Social Practices: A Development in Culturalist Theorizing", European Journal of Social Theory; Vol.5, No.2; pp. 243-263 DOI: 10.1177/13684310222225432 [http://est.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/243]
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Creativity is key to successful completion of design researcher PhDs
"DESIGNERS ENJOY DESIGNING
The practicalities of the design-based Ph.D (or Ph.D's generally in the creative arts) often fails to recognise the wider needs of the researcher who would typically have bachelors and masters degrees in their field and where the structure of their degree programme(s) would have been practice-based i.e. they have considerable prior history of creative practice; they enjoy creative practice; and they may well miss the fulfilment of creative practice if none was undertaken during a three to five year full time Ph.D.
STUDENTS NEED TUTORS THAT CAN DESIGN
Practice-based learning at undergraduate and masters level requires a significant taught input by competent practitioners. It is all too common for academics to loose or fail to develop capability in practice as they move through an academic career that is based on teaching and research. The typical route by which full-time academics with a practitioner background acquire a Ph.D is through part-time study. In order to maintain competence as a practitioner for the benefit of students, there is a case to encourage the use of practice in staff Ph.D's.
RESEARCH OUTCOMES NEED DESIGNING
An unexpected outcome from the author's experience of Ph.D supervision in creative disciplines has been the scenario where professional practice was necessary for the progress of the research. 'Tools' are a popular and relevant outcome from design-based Ph.D's and situations arise where the tool itself must be designed in order to facilitate its validation. It is therefore necessary to consider the use of researcher-practice where practice is not a direct means of the data collection but a process by which research outcomes can progress to validation."
(Mark Evans, p.75, 2009)
Evans, M. (2009). "Creative professional practice in methods and methodology: case study examples from Ph.D’s in industrial design". EKSIG 2009: Experiential Knowledge, Method & Methodology, Experiential Knowledge Special Interest Group.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
