Hi Robert,
your experiences sound similar to mine, and yet your post risks raising the hoary old question of
whether research methodologies in design practice can also be considered as scholarship. Rather
than shift the discussion back to this question, I think certainly, each person brings to the research
arena whatever resources they have gained through practice, yet these skills and processes are not
necessarily explicitly articulated as research methodologies that construct data or analytical
methodologies that analyse data so they can be understood and possibly used by people outside
design.
For example, while I used design skills to visualise a large text-based data set (67 pages) so I could
actually analyse it, I also used design skills in the actual analysis and the representation of my
analysis. The process involved colour coding thumbnail sketches of the interview transcript by hand,
generating a visual 'data map', and visualising my analysis in 'zine format, which sits in the text of
the chapter similarly to the way images and words are incorporated in a graphic novel. While my
process will not shake any design trees for originality, it may however introduce non-designers
doing qualitative interview data analysis to visual processes that may assist analysis and enhance its
representation, as a viable alternative to text-based tables or diagrammatic representations. Of
course, it's horses for courses, and while I devised this process because I found it difficult to 'see'
the data in its entirety so I could analyse bits of it, others may not find visual methods suitable, yet
by articulating these methods, it may open up possibilities for research beyond design.
cheers, teena
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