Abstract 31: (ACCEPTED)

How to Chose Methods for Research on Design Methods
There is a long tradition in research on design methods and methodology (cf. e. g. Cross, 1984, Bürdek, 2005). Due to changing demands for products, changing technology and organisational constraints on design processes, design methods underly persistent development (cf. e. g. Clarkson & Eckert, 2005).
During the decades of research on design methods, no overall agreement about a consistent research methodology has been established. In accordance with the richness of design research, there are different research approaches on the investigation of design methods (cf. e. g. conferences and other events of the Design Research Society and The Design Society). Within a PhD work concerning design methods, these research methods must be discussed. Since research methods are more or less just means, they should be selected rather pragmatically.
Within this paper, a distinct example of research on design methods will be used to discuss criteria for the selection of appropriate research methods within a PhD work. Starting with a rough description of the research problem, the development of certain design methods will be depicted in order to derive a research question. The second part of the paper will emphasize on the core of this contribution, namely possibilities of scientific research on design methods correlating with concrete hypotheses. This should be the main topic of the discussion at the Questions & Hypotheses Conference concerning this paper.
1: developing design methods
That knowledge plays a central role in product development is largely undisputed. There is, however, no agreement about which kinds of knowledge are relevant for the disciplines involved. Industrial Designers seem to require a special kind of knowledge at the beginning of a design process. This has been observed by analysing industrial design projects completed by novice design students whose industrial design education is preceded by an engineering curriculum. The observation has shown that some students have difficulties acquiring knowledge at the start of the design process. We assume that these are rather problems of activation than problems of existence, as the source of the larger part of knowledge used in the design process is the designer himself (e. g. Goel, 1995, Lawson, 2004, Lawson, 2006). He must however be able to activate and use this source. Awareness about this problem leads us to consider facilitating methods: We are looking for design methods which support the acquisition of the “right” knowledge for the industrial design process. In order to develop methods for this purpose, we defined criteria which help to distinguish industrial design knowledge from other knowledge (in the process of interdisciplinary product development, in particular from engineering knowledge). We were looking at prescriptive object knowledge (van Aken, 2005) which is needed at the start of the industrial design process. We found the following criteria:
– It is not known at the very beginning of the design process (cf. Jonas, 2004, Hacker & Sachse, 2006). The whole design process is a process of knowledge acquisition. It is completed when the process has been finished, the design knowledge then lies in the design result.
– It must be acquired from the
––– prior (and experiential) knowledge (cf. Schön, 1983, Hacker & Sachse, 2006, Lawson, 2004, Dixon & O'Reilly, 2002),
––– episodic and factual knowledge (Uhlmann & Schulze, 2007, Uhlmann & Schulze, 2008, Visser, 1995),
––– socio-cultural and everyday knowledge (Lawson, 2004, Visser, 2006, Strickfaden, 2006)
– It is implicit and tacit (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995, Rust, 2004)
– It is objective, subjective and emotional (Press & Cooper, 2003, Budd, Taylor, Wakkary, & Everden, 2003, Uhlmann, 2005).
We then used these criteria among others (regarding e. g. organizational matters) to examine methods of knowledge acquisition in order to develop a tool which enables novice designers to acquire a “starters kit” of object design knowledge. From the huge variety of methods available for product development and design (cf. e. g. Lindemann, 2007) and knowledge management (e. g. Reinmann & Mandl, 2004) we chose storytelling (e. g. Thier, 2006) and scenario-based methods (e. g. Ringland, 2006), combined and modified it for our purposes. The core of the tool is a sort of narrative scenarios (cf. e. g. Gaßner & Steinmüller, 2006) on the relationship between prototypal target-group members and the objects to be designed. The tool also consists of basic brainstorming and brainwriting techniques for the development as well as verbal and visual mood allegories for the analysis of the narrative scenarios.
This tool and its single methods have been seen in one or another form in product development as well as industrial design education and practice before. However, the analysis of the problem described above, finally led to the adaption and combination of these methods resulting in the specific tool which helps novice designers to acquire the “right” knowledge. We successfully implemented this tool into our education programme and into industrial design workshops for engineers. However, we do not know yet whether the novices only feel better (more contended, confident etc.) or whether they indeed improved their knowledge acquisition or even their design processes and design results.
2: investigating design methods
The feelings of designers, like for instance self-confidence in the process, may be one argument for the application of certain design methods. But if our purpose is to steadily develop and improve design processes we must investigate what and how design methods affect designers and processes more deeply.
The diversity of opportunities to investigate design methods leads to the unavoidable necessity to narrow down the choice. There are many questions that would be interesting to answer, many hypotheses that would be interesting to verify or falsify. But within a PhD work, only a rather small section can be accomplished, as there is just one person that must do the work within a limited time frame. There is the need for precise criteria to select the right opportunity and the right research methods for the investigation on design methods.
There are mainly three fields where such criteria can be derived from:
– The research problem and research questions, as far as formulated
– Verdicts on research methods, unhappily not available from one hand for design research
– Organizational boundaries such as time frame, number of available test persons, ...
Within the presentation at the Questions & Hypotheses Conference I will fill these three topics with concrete criteria concerning the research project described above.
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