Thesis:
Design Research
Definition:
A structured inquiry, using the tools of design, to look outside of the self, for new discoveries.
A structured inquiry means several things. First, it suggests that the designer will determine the rules for creating outcomes, and that those rules create the outcomes--not the designer directly. If the designer were creating the outcomes directly then it wouldn't be an inquiry, it would be creation. Structured inquiry also implies that a process will be followed and that process is just as responsible for the results as the designer.
When not based on using the tools of design--or what designers know and can do well--research becomes a weak copying of others' methods. Speaking specifically about the Super Studio process, Lisa Nugent et al. state "...these methods, empower designers to use the qualities unique to design instead of relying singularly on other disciplines" (L. Nugent et.al. 2007, pg1).
It is the external world, outside of the self, that must be researched to be understood. Structured inquiries that use the tools of design are not controversial, they are the definition of a design experiment. It is when the topic of the inquiry moves away from style, technique or outcome--when the topic of inquiry moves beyond the "artificial world" of design or internal world of the designer as author--that people begin to "struggle with the concept of research through design." It is in the external world that new discoveries, new possibilities, and new inspirations exist.
A problem for design research arises from wherever it looks beyond itself, there are other fields already investigating there. For instance human centered design research is often described as ethnographic because ethnography and HCDR both have people and their customs as topics. However, people and their customs are also the topic of various social scientists, journalists, photo journalists, documentarians, artists, poets, and authors. Design should not be intimidated into avoiding a subject because others are already there.
New discoveries from design research are most often not facts. In order for a discovery to be a fact, it must be specific, narrow, and irrefutable. The discoveries that designers seek are more textural than factual. It is not that they seek inaccurate information, but rather nuanced, complex, hard to summarize information. New discoveries are new nuanced understandings of a topic that didn't exist before doing the research. These discoveries are intended to be fed back into design, either for use by the designer or others.