Hello Gio,
First, I feel your pain. Part of the 'developing your own question' routine
is meant for you to flounder around until you figure out what you are
interested in. It's a process. Some schools allow you to nearly drown in
your own curiosity, others direct your studies succinctly. (And of course
everything in between.) Perhaps you and I fall closer to the first
category. I like to imagine that whatever happens is what we need. (I'm
kind of philosophical in this regard.)
I would suggest that you think about your questions by following Brenda
Laurel’s book “Design Research Methods and Perspectives” by answering as
follows:
Beginning here:
Your Context for this Inquiry is: a PhD in Product Design Education
Which topic in Design Education interests you?
Curriculum Design (program and course content construction)
Instructional Design (methods of teaching and learning)
Educational Technology (tools used in designing and educating)
Innovation & Creativity (process of designing)
History of Design Education
Philosophy of Education (purpose and orientation of education e.g.
technology skills versus design knowledge and aesthetics versus design
process)
Theory of Design Education
Are you interested in …
People
Processes
Forms
Or Action/Change
… Who are the Subjects that you will study?
Designers (students)
Designed object
User/Customer
Organization/Institution
…. What is the Domain of your inquiry?
Product/Service
Theory
Practice
Learning/Education
Commercial/Industrial
…From these answers, form a question—who, what, where, when, why, how?
…The research methodology is selected because it answers the question.
Experimental
Qualitative
Quantitative
Speculative
Experiential
Performative
Discovery-Led/Poetic
Formal/Structural
Procedural
Gio, your adviser will help guide you according to how your own school's
philosophy of doctoral education jives with your field of
industrial/product design.
When I was a doctoral student, I co-authored a paper with my advisor that
you might find interesting. You can download it:
“Separating the hand from the fingers: an examination of tool use in design
education.”
Abstract: Design, the visual solving of problems, is based on a mix of
thinking and the skilled use of media. The contemporary practice of design
requires a high level of knowledge in both technical skill and in design
ability. Recently, a vast range of new tools have been forced into design
education without a corresponding understanding of how these tools change
people, their work, and their thinking. Our education process in graphic
design has been based on a balance of the cognitive and representational
skills of older technologies such as drawing and making. These media are
based in human creation, and are derived from the work of the hand. With
the new digital tools, however, the process has changed. Like design on
steroids, software short circuits the process of thinking, substituting
results built on [literal] sand. Design educators must develop an
understanding of media effects in the design process; engage conscious
limiting of media in design education; and develop a meta-cognitive
awareness of media choice in design students.
https://bethekoch.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/2005-designs-on-elearning-paper.pdf
… and my MFA in Interactive Design thesis (wherein I produced an
experimental designed object by applying theories from other fields)
“Exploring the affective nature of electronic learning environments”
https://bethekoch.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/exploring-the-affective-nature-of-electronic-learning-environments.pdf
My PhD in Design dissertation flowed out of my MFA studies. You can find it
here:
“Human emotion response to typographic design”
https://bethekoch.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/beth-e-koch-dissertation.pdf
Finally, you may want to consult “Research Methods in Education” by Cohen,
Manion, and Morrison.
Good Luck!
Beth E. Koch, PhD
Assistant Professor of Art and Design
West Virginia Wesleyan College
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2016 01:35:55 +0000
From: Gio Contreras <[log in to unmask]>
Subject: Advice with PhD Thesis
Dear members of the list,
Regards, my name is Giovanni (Gio), I am currently in my 3rd year of a PhD
in design education at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The reason for
my message is to ask you for your advice.
We held a 'Winter School' back in January this year where (for the first
time), we (students) had to present our research. The audience was
integrated by ourselves and we also got special guests, who came precisely
to give us with advice/thoughts regarding our PhD research/presentation.
The topic of my research is (more or less): "the future instruction of
digital technologies in industrial/product design education (college-level
undergrad)." I have been looking at things like; what kind of courses do
design schools offer/teach, what do students and teachers understand by
different technology concepts like 'digital design, what's the level of
proficiency with digital design tools that students acquire through school,
and which sources do they actually learn from.
Long story short; after my presentation, part of the feedback I got, was
that ‘the bigger story is missing.’ And I can see why, in my presentation
I talked about my journey (and struggle) to determine a research question
that satisfied me, and how, in that process I ended up ‘changing’ my
research question(s) three times: I started with the intention of
‘measuring the effects of CAD’ on the capacity of student’s to come up with
innovative solutions,’ (something I stayed way from when I felt that any
research into creativity would be unadvisable for a novice researcher),
then I decided to focus more on ‘is CAD teaching in design schools
outdated?’ which eventually led me to what I thought was a better question:
‘what kind of digital literacies should product design students have in the
future to be successful in their professional practice,’ and ultimately
this led me to the question: ‘should schools actually continue to teach
this type of technology courses in front of the increasing number of
quality online courses available?’
If I think about the papers I have written during my studies here so far,
the common denominator is that they all have had to do with education; a
fewer were more specifically about technology in education, and even a
fewer more with technology in design education. I made a paper about
informal learning, another about disruptive technologies in design
education, another about computer programming in design, another about
institutional autonomy and for-profit education, another about
computational creativity in design education, another about creativity (one
of the first) and I’m working on another about doctoral studies in design
education. Why not all of them about a more specific topic? Well, I think
in part it was because I was not clear about the direction I was going, as
I mentioned before. The other, is because there are some issues with the
program, but that’s something not worth to discuss at the moment.
The point is, that I feel as if I have been going in circles, wandering
around something that is there, but, somehow I haven't been able to
identify it or, articulate it with clarity.
The suggestion(s) I got from several of the more senior professors who were
there during my session was that, perhaps I could ‘see myself from the top’
and kind of ‘look at the big picture’ so I could take something out of that
journey of mine, like for instance translate it into some sort of model
that would allow us to think about digital technologies in design education
or something like that.
The other was that, by doing so, I could, see where I am going, or what is
the direction that this is going (‘the big picture’ I guess). Or, like one
of the professors said; to think of it like; ‘if this is the journey, what
is the question?’ I guess it is like; ‘if these are the acts, what’s the
name of the play?’
Apparently this is not entirely uncommon. That same professor said that, he
'had seen theses like that.'
So, my questions/request for advice are:
1. Does it come to mind/do you know of, any thesis(es) example(s) that
somehow 'followed' this approach where the research question(s)/concerns
(the "name of the play" if you will) came-up or became clear at the end of
the studies?
2. Is there any literature, that you would suggest, and which discusses
methods or theories that support/illustrate this approach (where the 'main
issue' is not identified until the end)?
I will very much appreciate any feedback suggestions that you may have.
Thanks a lot in advance!
B.R.
Gio.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------
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
-----------------------------------------------------------------
|