From Danielle Wilde of Southern Danish University
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Dear Ken, Meredith, everyone,
a humble contribution.
My context:
I am an Assoc. Prof at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). I completed my PhD in Australia in 2012, followed this with a series of research fellowships at RMIT University in Melbourne, mostly connected to the School of Fashion and Textiles where I am now an adjunct professor. I have three PhD students, all external to SDU, and am in the process of picking up a fourth (also external). Two are in Textiles, one in Computer Science, and one in Theatre. One is in Finland, one in Germany, one in Chile and one in Australia. I don’t have any completions as yet, but the first is on schedule to complete in December this year.
My PhD was practice-based, but was also practice-led in that I made contributions to how design research is practiced, while investigating my research question/s through the practice. If anyone is interested, they can find the written part of the thesis and the exhibition catalogue here: http://www.daniellewilde.com/publications/. I was based in the Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture at Monash University and at Australia’s national research division of materials science and engineering, at the CSIRO. My doctorate received the University medal, and the inaugural Australian Prime Minister’s Award, amongst other honours, so despite technically not being eligible to undertake it (my masters was project-based and I did not have honours), I did ok. Otherwise, I have an MA in Interaction Design from the RCA in London, and a wealth of experience in diverse contexts ranging from arts-based research bringing technology into live performance to being a Senior research Fellow and speechwriter for two Chief Scientists of Australia (prior to undertaking my doctorate). I don’t have an undergraduate degree.
Three of the candidates I supervise had begun their doctorates before I came on board. I was invited in for the following reasons:
– one of the textiles-based candidates approached me personally, with a request to guide her in how to account for the design within her research. Her faculty is adept at what they call creative research (she is doing a DCA, not a PhD), and it seems that no-one there was able to help her to understand how to theoretically account for what she was doing through her use of design methods.
– with the other Textiles-based candidate, her institution approached me to see if I could help. She had 30 years industry experience before beginning her PhD and was struggling to make the necessary shift in both her thinking and her practice. She was not able to understand, let alone account for what she was doing in research terms, and her writing was pretty much incoherent as a result.
– with the candidate in computer science, I was approached by both the candidate and her supervisor, as her advisor could guide her in methods appropriate to CS-oriented HCI, but she is developing costumes, at times in collaboration with choreographers, and the methods she is being exposed to are not always well-suited for her research. They requested my support to help her understand how to make use of design theory and methods better suited to her research concerns.
The fourth candidate approached me before he started his doctorate. He has two supervisors on the ground in Chile. I provide guidance from a distance and Skype in for his examinations. Hhe will come to Denmark next year for three months to work more closely with me. He is going through a process, as any PhD candidate does. He is not struggling in the ways the other three candidates or their faculties are in terms of conducting and accounting for the research, so my comments reflect more the challenges faced by the other three.
My comments on how to advance PhD studies in Design:
In the specific contexts in which I supervise, what is missing from the research training at the home institutions is a rigorous accounting for design research methods – how they might be understood, applied, drawn from, adopted, adapted, developed and accounted for. What is also missing is support for the candidates to learn how to write. So, Research Methods and Academic Writing. Intertwined with these, and absolutely essential is development of Critical Thinking skills.
Basically, I see the need as threefold:
(a)
helping candidates to understand how to conduct their research with appropriate rigour, designing their experiments to help them reflect on specific questions — yes, related to their overarching question, but also to answer a specific question (or questions) that is much more drilled down within the broader concerns. It may seem obvious, but for each of my candidates this notion has been a revelation, and has helped them to better account for what they are doing, what they are finding, and what their contribution may eventually be.
(b)
connecting research-in-practice back to theory, and intertwining the two. For some reason this isn’t really happening.
(c)
considering writing a design action, and making it essential to the research-in-practice.
I learned how to write while doing my PhD (and I’m still learning), I thus draw from my personal efforts in this area, as well as what I have learned by teaching my Masters students to write (they were landing in my office, with only 4 months to do their thesis, sometimes without even basic academic writing skills. I thought we could do better than this so I co-opted part of the research methods course I co-teach to give them some basic skills and resources to draw from). The resources I introduce include:
• William Zinsser. On writing well. Harper Collins Publishers, 1991
• William Strunk and E. B. White. The Elements of Style, 4th Edition. Pearson. 1999
• Anne Janzer. The Writer's Process: Getting your brain in gear. Cuesta Park Consulting, 2016.
• anything by Helen Sword. f.x. Air & Light & Time & Space; Stylish Academic Writing; The Writer's Diet.
• Ann Lamott. Bird by bird: Some instructions on writing and life. Anchor. 2007
• Stephen King. On writing. Simon and Schuster. 2002
• Umberto Eco. How to write a thesis. MIT Press, 2015.
• Italio Calvino. Six Memos for the Next Millenium, the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures 1985-86. 2009
there are more, this is just where I start. I suggest reading 1+3 to begin with, as Zinsser speaks to clarity, simplicity and elegance, and Janzer speaks to implementing a personal writing practice.
when I teach writing, I have my students do writing exercises, sometimes related to their research interests, sometimes not. I cover their submissions in red comments, pulling them up on everything I can, and then in class I speak to what I found so that everyone can learn from it. this may seem a bit detailed, as well as basic and obvious, but the results we are getting speak for themselves. With regard the PhD candidate who basically couldn’t write a year and a half ago, she now has a daily writing practice. She successfully applied for competitive research funding 6 months ago and last week won best student paper at a conference. The others are also writing conference and journal articles and having them published. This includes the Masters students, who are submitting (and being accepted at) top tier conferences.
As I mentioned above, it’s also about developing critical thinking skills, but this skill develops hand-in.hand with all three of the above.
and in the case of my doctoral candidates, their contributions are becoming richer – technical, theoretical, methodological and cultural – and their understandings of the potential of design research, and what they can bring as a researcher, is deepening. And while I understand my approach reflects powerfully my circumstances, I see around me all the time that when candidates are weak, Research Methods, Writing Skills and skills in Critical Thinking are what they are missing to be able to account for their research.
one final comment. It relates to a broader issue, no less relevant. I begin with an anecdote:
I did my PhD at Monash University in Melbourne and was excused from Research Methods because the lecturer thought I didn’t need it, because I did an extremely broad-ranging and seemingly thorough bibliography when I was asked to. It wasn’t very good, looking back, but he didn’t know how to contribute to me so excused me from the entire course, which meant I received no formal training in Research Methods, and no mentorship either from my home institution. At Monash there were 120 PhD candidates in Art, Design and Architecture when I went through. They were unable to resource this amount of candidates. I don’t know what the numbers are like now, but they did make a commitment some time ago to reduce them. It’s hard, I imagine, to do so in a neoliberal education context, when universities are paid handsome sums (at least in Australia) for a timely completion (when I completed in 2012 they would have received $80,000. I don’t know what the figures are today).
So there are systemic issues at play here that impact design research education, not addressed in my above three points.
I don’t know if this is much use to anyone, but I share it in the hope that someone can benefit.
I’m happy to elaborate off list if anyone wants to know more.
best
Danielle
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Danielle Wilde
Associate Professor, Embodied Design
Director, BodyBioSoft Lab
University of Southern Denmark, Kolding
Adjunct Professor, Design Research
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
Management Committee (representing Denmark)
European Network for Environmental Citizenship
EU COST Action CA 16229: http://www.enec-cost.eu
T +45 6550 7632
M +45 9350 7201
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www.daniellewilde.com
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