Nigel —
It is true that inadequate framing makes for an inadequate thesis. At the same time, there are many framing formats available. I completed undergraduate industrial design studies in a faculty of engineering, which valued exploration of the scientific kind so often mentioned on this list. While useful and fun, this is not the only approach available. In my case, I have gone on to explore others: first in a Master of Fine Arts; and now by delving into a third academic field: Library and Information Science, where I am "all but dissertation" for a PhD in the humanities.
These areas are so dissimilar that they may merit some description. Following the unalloyed bliss of industrial design, my entry into fine art explored the respect that "art" often conveys to the designerly imagination. However, I ultimately found art unsatisfying as a practice, or at least as a practice inside degree-granting institutions. Where design seeks to change the world by acting directly upon it, art (in the contemporary version) seems to prefer to to act upon people's attitudes towards the world. I don't deny that art is real, or that it can be provocative and subtle, but for me, design is a larger and more meaningful field in which to frolic. (My thesis project was covered in Canadian Art magazine if anyone wants to see how I reconciled that problem personally.)
My current educational venture, a PhD in the humanities, shares almost nothing with art, let alone with engineering and science (including the social sciences). The catch-up learning curve is very steep. As a designer entering a field that is not design, I am blind to nuance; unaware of widely accepted standards. As Philippe Gautier notes, part of the problem lies in the endless fields of previously-unsuspected reading material (Durkheim! Habermas!), which I must vigorously avoid if I am frame and complete a do-able thesis. Foucault, okay, but not Marx. A PhD is actually a very small venture in this sense. For an illustrated explanation of that smallness, check out Matt Might's charming "Illustrated Guide to a PhD."
The illustrated guide to a PhD
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The illustrated guide to a PhD
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As João Ferreira observes, undertaking a PhD relies on good advising. My advisor is a skilled veteran. Because I am a designer, my thesis is inevitably eccentric, and she is therefore doubly scrupulous in beating academic rigour into the project. She was not initially enthusiastic, after inheriting me from another professor who left town unexpectedly. When I explained to her that I thought that domestic kitchens were badly organized, and felt that library science, with its extreme knowledge of sorting and classification, might offer some pointers, she sighed. But several weeks after we commenced work, she "got it." She said, "you mean, if I piled a whole lot of small books seven or eight layers deep on a high shelf out of arm's reach, and then covered the shelf with opaque cabinet doors... the books would be hard to find?" That was five years ago.
I might note here that just as my advisor influences me, so I believe that I influence my advisor. People who work in education are learners, and she learns from me. In other words, I believe that as designers start to enter serious academia, academia is going to change — the chasm of understanding will be bridged from both sides. Such bridging will not be the result of bold designerly intuition or "design thinking," but rather a creative synthesis based on mutual knowledge.
Returning to the original comment of Johann van der Merwe, and his follow-ups, I would like to suggest that designers should not take pride in generating brand-new "free" formats for advanced education. If you don't like scientific research, pick a different format. My methodology is "close reading." It has no experiments.
The point here is not just that there are many methodologies to choose from, but that any one of them is almost certainly more sophisticated than anything you can invent for yourself. If you were designing a new artifact, you would benchmark the competition before starting. Otherwise, you might find yourself re-inventing the wheel because you didn't know that anyone had thought of it before. Benchmark old methodologies before you reject them.
Adopting existing research models is a strategy that suggests that the point of the research is not the originality of the format, but the content of the original ideas revealed through it. A tried-and-true academic method is like a hammer -- it carries a lot of tacit knowledge that may not be visible at first glance. Sure, to a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail, but if you really think that you have your eye on a worthy nail, try the hammer. And don't just dabble. With practice, you can drive a four-inch spike in only two blows — my grandfather taught me how when I was a skinny eight-year-old. Until you learn to swing the hammer, you have no right to dismiss its utility.
From this point of view, I was startled, and unhappy, to hear from Johann that this thesis did not have "one defined topic, the enforcing of which [monotopical] will be the death of designresearch." While I can admire in theory the persistence and insight it took for Johann to complete his work, it seems to me that focusing on a single topic is the heart of PhD research: the one essential chore needed not just to clarity the perhaps-non-obvious unity of the chosen goal, but to drive that topic past the edge of the known (see Matt Might, above.) Here I might add that not only have I not read Johann's thesis, but that I have no intention of doing so, because I find his descriptions off-putting. Sorry Johann, but I'm doing a PhD, and don't have time to mess around.
And that note leads to one point that was not evident to me when I started a PhD. The work carries an opportunity cost. Time spent doing a PhD is time spent not doing other things. Because I decided to do a PhD I am no longer up-to-date on 3D computer software. I have not made art for several years. My garden goes unweeded. It was not clear when I started that this sacrifice would be needed. Life is short. Luckily, it is also fascinating, and grows only more fascinating the further that you explore.
Heidi
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