Dear Mauricio,



Thanks for your query. Practitioners are not “restricted” to clinical research. Many practitioners engage in basic or applied research – provided they have the necessary research skills and interests. But “many” refers to the reasonably large number of practitioners who can and do engage in basic or applied research. This “many” is nevertheless a minority within the total population of the design profession.



The majority of practitioners face two challenges. First, very few practitioners have serious research training of any kind. Second, professional practice is itself time consuming and demanding. Designers solve problems for clients – and few clients want to fund major research.



Some designers engage in serious research every time they take on a client. Others do no research at all – they draw on their reservoir of skills and knowledge and simply solve the problem as it seems to them. Often, they solve the problem stated in the brief whether or not it is the real problem. (There may be a difference between the problem stated in the brief and the real problem. The purpose of the “five whys” in the Toyota system is to ensure that engineers, managers, automotive designers, and other designers understand and solve the real problem.)



Per Mollerup and his colleagues at DesignLab always proposed that ten percent of every project budget be allocated to research to determine the situation and to understand the problems they would have to solve. This was generally clinical research. But given his background in research methods and statistical inference, Mollerup has the research skill to make the most of clinical research.



Clinical research is diagnostic research. Most physicians, nurses, lawyers, engineers, or practitioners in any profession engage in diagnostic research to determine the needs and problems of the specific client and a specific case. That is what the client pays for, and few clients want to solve basic or applied problems for other clients.



Research and development teams creating new products and services sometimes engage in applied research or even basic research. These typically involve big projects that justify the investment. And even then, most projects fail. So when I state that most practitioners do clinical research, I am basically saying that most of the people and organizations that hire practitioners are paying for diagnosis and solution, not for research. It is the situation that generally constrains practitioners, whether or not they have research skills.



I discuss the relationship between clinical, applied, and basic research on pages 509-513 of my article “Theory Construction in Design Research.”



Friedman, Ken. 2003. “Theory construction in design research: criteria: approaches, and methods.” Design Studies, 24 (2003), 507–522. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0142-694X(03)00039-5



You can download a copy from my Academia page. It is the first article in the section headed Papers.



https://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman



I’ll have to suggest good examples of clinical, applied, and basic research on another occasion. This requires reviewing and reading, and the next couple of months are simply too full.



If you’d like to see a good example of all three kinds of research leading to a major global innovation, see the Embrace Baby Warmer



http://embraceglobal.org



This story started with a challenge project at Stanford d.school. The basic science is well known, so there is not too much basic research here – nevertheless, serious basic research lies behind it, including the research that led to new materials. In contrast, there is a great deal of applied research here, and significant clinical research.



The core idea was: “to design an intervention for neonatal hypothermia that cost less than 1% of the price of a state-of-the-art incubator.”



You can see the rest at the Embrace project web site.



To sum up, let me quote myself (Friedman 2003: 510-511) “Basic research involves a search for general principles. These principles are abstracted and generalized to cover a variety of situations and cases. Basic research generates theory on several levels. This may involve macro level theories covering wide areas or fields, midlevel theories covering specific ranges of issues or micro level theories focused on narrow questions. General principles often have broad application beyond their field of origin, and their generative nature sometimes gives them surprising power.



“Applied research adapts the findings of basic research to classes of problems. It may also involve developing and testing theories for these classes of problems. Applied research tends to be midlevel or micro level research. At the same time, applied research may develop or generate questions that become the subject of basic research.



“Clinical research involves specific cases. Clinical research applies the findings of basic research and applied research to specific situations. It may also generate and test new questions, and it may test the findings of basic and applied research in a clinical situation. Clinical research may also develop or generate questions that become the subject of basic research or applied research.



Any of the three frames of research may generate questions for the other frames. Each may test the theories and findings of other kinds of research. Clinical research generally involves specific forms of professional engagement. In the flow of daily activity, most design practice is restricted to clinical research. There isn’t time for anything else. Precisely because this is the case, senior designers increasingly need a sense of research issues with the background and experience to distinguish among classes and kinds of problems, likely alternative solutions, and a sense of the areas where creative intervention can make a difference.”



Design practitioners are not restricted to clinical research as individuals. The constraints and demands of professional practice create restrictions. Given the challenges and demands of design practice today, this makes research training and skill more important than ever. Designers with the appropriate skills in basic and applied research will do better clinical research, better diagnosis, and they will start the problem solving process on a more solid foundation.



Best regards,



Ken



Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | Editor-in-Chief | 设计 Sheji. The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation | Published by Elsevier in Cooperation with Tongji University | Launching in 2015



University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology ||| Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China ||| Adjunct Professor | School of Creative Arts | James Cook University | Townsville, Australia



Email [log in to unmask] | Academia http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman | D&I http://tjdi.tongji.edu.cn







-----------------------------------------------------------------

PhD-Design mailing list  <[log in to unmask]>

Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design

Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design

-----------------------------------------------------------------