Master | Course | Sep ’20 – Nov ’20
Constructive Design Research
Type
Compulsory
Given by
Stephan Wensveen
(Joep Frens)
Team
Iris Bataille
Jef Rouschop
Rick van Schie
Ananya Mehrotra
IN SHORT
This course introduced us to the Industrial Design research groups Future Everyday and Systemic Change, their topics and theories; and introduces methodologies of doing research through design. In a group, we focus on 1 topic under the supervision of a PhD candidate and Joep Frens. Over the course of 8 weeks, we conducted research on the effect of reflection videos on shared understanding during remote collaboration and wrote a paper on this. Additionally, we individually created a research poster and reflection.
In this paper, a protocol for reflection videos is created to explore how these affect the shared understanding in a remote collaborative design team during the prototyping phase of a design process. Over the course of two iterations, designers worked remotely on a design process, using reflection videos as the sole form of communication. Based on diary entries, interviews and observation of participants, the protocol for the reflection video was adjusted between iterations and insights were evaluated. From these insights it was found that the reflection videos could facilitate extra shared understanding in a small team by being an additional tool for the communication of argumentation behind individual design decisions and for the explanation of sketches and prototypes.
LEARNINGS
I wanted to learn how to analyze and interpret research outcomes better, and how to then apply these findings onto a real-time context and possible design.
Secondly, my goal was to improve reflection skills on the research that I conducted. Due to the explorative nature of our study and the fact that we were our own participants of the study, we had to look critically at the implications this had on the validity of our findings.
