Hi Noam and others,
In the spirit of things 'concrete' and that work, I have sought out one
or two books/papers which I think cover kinds of research methods that
work well in the context of design and largely, come from the 'real
world'.
Firstly a book which is actually for practicing managers, but deals
well with research which is not 'laboratory' based and covers all the
mess and unknowns that occur when investigating with real people or
environments:
Easterby-Smith,M. Thorpe,R and Lowe,A (1991) Management Research. An
Introduction. Sage Publications
In terms of specific research methods:
McDonagh-Philp.D and Bruseberg.A (2000) The use of Focus Groups in
Design Research: A literature review. Collaborative Design. Springer.
Design Management Journal published an issue called Research Supporting
Effective Design Management in Fall 1998. In particular I found these
two useful as they outline innovative and fairly easy to apply research
methods:
Ireland.C. The Story of Purple Moon.
Stack. M. Using Research to Create Visual and Verbal Agreement
And finally, the part of the research process which students
often struggle with most - the analysis of qualitative data. The result
of data collection is often piles of transcripts or tapes and making
sense of it all can be a daunting task. The nature of qualitative data
is that it is often rich and varied - all things good data perhaps
should not be! A useful book which provides good information on
analysis methods is:
Riley. J. (1990) Getting the Most from your Data. Technical and
Educational Services Ltd.
There are probably lots more but lack of time has not alowed me to look
further.
I would (and do) recommend these to MA/PhD students AND to practicing
designers as I believe that they are clear and succinct guides to
methods that really work.
Cheers
Philippa Ashton
Staffordshire University
UK
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