Dear Vincent,
Since you’ve asked a question of this nature on the list, I’ll give you the answer I would give to anyone at my own university if someone were to ask me. I hope this does not seem too blunt, but you’ve asked a serious research question and this is a responsible answer.
The first part of the answer to your question has to do with the context. As I understand your question, you are a PhD student who has already completed a series of experimental or quasi-experimental activities. You are now at the point of writing up your activities for your thesis.
It is difficult to understand how you have come to the point of writing up your research before discussing an issue of this kind with your supervisor. You should review your research procedures, methods, and methodology with your supervisor before you begin to do the work.
For a PhD student to jump into lab work or conduct experiments before reviewing plans with a supervisor can require a PhD student to rework the methods and procedures. In the worst case, it can require an entirely new project. At the least, it raises questions about the literature review – if you had done a literature review, some of the issues involving the use of a brand name would have likely been discussed, and you’d have a model of past practice on which to rely or from which to depart.
The second problem involves ethics clearance. It seems that you have been working with human beings. If you have gone over all aspects of the project with a supervisor and with your university ethics committee, I would have thought that someone would have caught this question in managing the ethics review. I am not familiar with regulations on ethics in France, but in Australia, any project involving human beings from a simple survey or questionnaire to a laboratory simulation requires an ethics review.
Finally, there is the nature of the expertise you need to answer the questions you are asking. The PhD at Le Laboratoire Conception de Produits et Innovation at ENSAM is a PhD in industrial engineering. This particular issue involves aspect of design research that touches on the social sciences. If your supervisor at ENSAM is an engineer, you should have conferred with a social scientist to explore the dimensions of this question.
That said, I have a short answer.
You are where you are in the process. I don’t know how much you have done on your own and how much supervision you have received. I don’t know your university regulations concerning experimental work with human beings, but the EU has a significant body of law governing different forms of research. You should not undertake human experiments of any kind without reviewing the rules with your supervisor and the appropriate university committee to gain approval. In the course of explaining your methods, someone should have offered advice on any questionable aspects of your process.
Ethics clearance is a matter of law in every nation. What we think about how each university manages the ethics clearance process may be open to discussion, but everyone must respect the laws of each jurisdiction. If you used brand names for the experiment, that would be an aspect of ethics clearance, and this issue should have been considered.
That leads to the final answer: if using specific brand names was part of your experimental or quasi-experimental process, you are obliged to report them in your thesis. If this somehow “contaminates” your results, the contamination is a laboratory factor and not a matter to decide now. Since I know nothing about the project, I’m not saying that this did “contaminate” the process. I am saying that whatever happened must be reported.
You introduced brand names to influence the thinking and behavior of the human beings who took part in the experiment. If there was no influence, you must report it. If there was an influence, you must report it. For this purpose, it may not be necessary for you to gain permission from the brands whose trademarked names you used. If permission is required under European or French law, you must get permission.
Some years ago, a colleague of mine needed to use a specific film script for a thesis. It took half a year of letters and telephone calls with negotiation and signed permissions to get an approved copy of the script and the right to use it and quote from it. That was her project and that’s what she needed to do.
The same thing often applies to people who wish to use copyrighted or trademarked images, or brand names.
For your research project, you have already used the brand names. Since you used them to materially and conceptually influence your participants, your report will in some respect reflect this fact. To withhold a factor that influences how people conceptualise their activities and how they behaved will skew your results. Withholding this information will raise serious problems for the thesis.
My suggestion is that you meet with your advisor or with the director of your laboratory. Talk these issues through and see what you can do at this point to examine and clarify the issues.
Solving these problem may be simple, or they may not. Either way, this is an issue that requires expert advise from some who can review with you the specific details of your project.
Good luck with your work.
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS | University Distinguished Professor | Swinburne University of Technology | Melbourne, Australia | [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]> | Mobile +61 404 830 462 | Home Page http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design/people/Professor-Ken-Friedman-ID22.html<http://www.swinburne.edu.au/design> Academia Page http://swinburne.academia.edu/KenFriedman About Me Page http://about.me/ken_friedman
Guest Professor | College of Design and Innovation | Tongji University | Shanghai, China
Vincent Rieuf wrote:
--snip--
I've been working on in-lab experiments on design activities which are piloted by fictive breifs. I found it important to include in the breif a client represented by a popular brand names like Nike, Nesspresso... so that the designers could associate themselves to a set of values, invested markets and brand identity. However now that I am explaining my document and writting about my experiments, I wonder if I should name the brands in the document. I do not whish to advertise them nor name them without their permission and I feel that my research work should not be tainted by any brand.
--snip--
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