Design Research Methodology: Research Proposal

April 14, 2022

Design Research Methodology: Research Proposal

15/03/2022 - 17/04/2022 (Week 1 - Week 4)

Evaleez Voo Lian Yun / 0350275

Design Research Methodology/ Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media

Research Proposal

Lectures

Week 1

What is Research?

The systematicand creative investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
Student research is self-directedwork in which students from all areas of studywork individually or as part of a team to explore issues of interest to them.
Students and faculty mentors work together to design and implement a research, scholarly, or creative project and then communicate the results to others.

Why should I do research?

Expands understanding and knowledge of your academic field.
Establish valuable connections with faculty.
Gain academic experiences that help expand your resume, such as presenting at research conferences, publishing, and working with a research team.
Develop critical thinking, leadership, time management, and communication skills.
Explore research techniques.

How should I start?

Identify your field of interest.
Delve into further research about it to establish an area (research problem) where you are interested to conduct research about.
Write a bit more extensively about the research problem in the form of a statement.
Formulate a research question that is derived from the research problem.
Identify research objectives that you would like to achieve from conducting this research.

Week 2

Problem statement

A concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon.
Identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product.

Research Question

An answerable inquiry into a specific concern or issue.
Initial step in a research project.
The ground of the foundation of your research.

How to write a research question:

Specify your specific concern or issue
Decide what you want to know about the specific concern or issue
Turn what you want to know and the specific concern into a question
Ensure that the question is answerable
Check to make sure the question is not too broad or too narrow

Research Objective

What we expect to achieve by a project.
May be linked with a hypothesis or used as a statement of purpose in a study that does not have a hypothesis.
Examples:

To describe what factors farmers take into account in making such decisions as whether to adopt a new technology or what crops to grow.
To developa budget for reducing pollution by a particular enterprise.
To describe the habitat of the giant panda in China.

Hypothesis

A tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables.
It is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in a study.
Unlessyou are creating a study that is exploratory in nature, your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your experiment or research.
A hypothesis does not have to be correct.

Variables

Something that can be changed or varied, such as a characteristic or value.
Generally used in psychology experiments to determine if changes to one thing result in changes to another.

Week 3

Research

An organisedand systematic study of a problem where the researcher attempts to address or find solution to the problem.

Research Question

An answerable inquiry into a specific concern or issue
The initial step in a research project, derived from the problem statement or research objectives. Influences the strategy that is employed in order to either provide answers to the questions or verify/falsify hypotheses.

Research Objective

What a researcher expects to accomplish by the end of a research project.
Derived from problem statement or research questions.
Is a clear, concise and declarative statement.
Focused on ways to measure the variables, e.g. identify or describe, etc.
A good objective is S.M.A.R.T:

Specific
Measurable
Attainable
Realistic
Time bound

Inductive Approach

Stages:

Observation

It is difficult to obtain information through the website of Etsy due to poor design

Observe a pattern

Conduct systematic study on another 10 online shops that pose the same problem.

Develop a theory

Poor web design of online shops causes difficulty for customers to obtain information.

Deductive Approach

Stages:

Start with an existing theor

Poor web design of online shops causes difficulty for customers to obtain information.

Formulate a hypothesis based on that theory

If online shops websites are designed well, all customers will be able to obtain information easily.

Collect data to test that theory

Conduct survey to collect data.

Analysethe results: does the data reject or support the hypothesis?

150 out of 200 survey participants agreed that poor web design hinders them from obtaining information.

Instructions

Process

Week 1

Tasks to Do

Read 2-3 articles about the certain topic you are interested in.
Start planning your proposal by defining your research topic and rationale.

Progress Remarks

Hurdle: When I did my research on entertainment design, it took me a while to find journal articles for this topic (maybe due to it being too broad, unrelated articles kept appearing).
By Saturday, I managed to find 2 documents - a design thesis and a journal article.
The Jungian Archetypes stated in the journal article spiked my interest, so I decided to use that in my research.
Decided upon the research topic, “Integration of Archetypes by Carl Jung in the Process of Character Design” and started the proposal draft

Draft 1

Week 2

Tasks to Do

Refine your proposal, make it more specific
Read through more studies (Secondary data)

Progress Remarks

Searched for more articles about character design through Google Scholar and Taylor’s Library.
Took the advice from Dr Noorhayati to further develop my research into “How to integrate their studies into a future character design”.
Edited the research topic into “The integration of Jungian Archetypes and visual elements in character design allows designers to accurately visualise the traits of a character.”
Further developed the rationale and problem statement by adding references from previous studies (Secondary data).
Hurdle: Found an interesting book in Taylor’s Online Library but the school didn’t have access to that platform. Tried to request, but this service is only available to post-graduate students.

Draft 2

Week 3

Tasks to Do

Edit your research topic, make it more specific

Progress Remarks

Finalised most of the proposal except for research methods.
Hurdle: Was informed that a thesis cannot be used, one of the references needs to be edited.
Found more books relating to character design
Asked some friends to read through the proposal to see if someone who isn’t researching on that topic would be able to understand what it was about

Result: They understood.

Draft 3

Week 4

Tasks to Do

Finalise research proposal

Progress Remarks

Found more articles that support the “colour” part of visual elements
Finalised the research proposal and moved it to pptx format.
Asked some friends again to read through the proposal to see if someone who isn’t researching on that topic would be able to understand what it was about

Result: They understood.

Draft 4

Week 5

Tasks to Do

Revise the proposal further
Add more content for the problem statement, make sure to find a gap to fill
Add 1 more research objective
Fix APA referencing (add indent)

Progress Remarks

Edited the proposal according to feedback.
Ready to submit when lecturer opens resubmission,

Draft 5

Final Outcome

Slide PDF:

Feedback

Week 1

Remember you should do your research as a designer. You are not a mass communication student/ IT student.
You can use other mediums, i.e. Blogs, TED talks, etc, it is not limited to journal articles only.

Week 2

These areas - people’s behaviours, characteristics etc - must involve the specialists to study for that
Use the secondary data, don’t research the psychology part
My job is to understand “How to integrate their studies into a future character design”
Search for findings that can help you create a signature character in the future - that has that quality or behaviour.

Week 3

Be prepared that papers may not be specifically targeting the hero archetype. Don’t be frustrated!
Focus on where the hero characters are from (Marvel, Japanese manga, Chinese Web Novel)
When you revise your proposal, create a new copy and don’t override the previous draft.
Conclusion: Whether the hypothesis is supported/ not enough data
To integrate > To explore the possible (You are just researching, not making the prototype)
Good progress
APA 7th citation

Week 4

Critical Review - min 5 journals
Can be not of the same topic, but it’ll be best if it aligns with the research so you can use it

Week 5

Add more content for the problem statement, make sure to find a gap to fill
Add 1 more research objective
Fix APA referencing (add indent)

Reflection

This assignment was interesting. Although I have done research before, it was done done particularly for the design industry. It forced me to read through several articles and books on design, specifically character design, as it was the main topic that I was interested in.

The hardest part for me was narrowing the topic to something really, really specific. In the end I chose Asian webcomics because that was what I was exposed to the most in real life and I could use my experience as a starting point for the reasearch problem. The hero archetype just naturally kicked in because every story must have a hero right?

The library class was quite boring not gonna lie (sorry Taylor's) but I did gain some knowledge from it, like how to use Mendeley, how to avoid plagirism and how to cite using APA (I was a hardcore Harvard referencer).