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would be unadvisable for a novice researcher), then I decided to focus more on ‘is CAD teaching in design schools outdated?’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.


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