Research through design
A way of doing research in which designing is the method: prototypes and artifacts are created to produce knowledge about a problem, not just to solve it.
What it’s for
It answers questions that can only be answered by making something new and seeing what happens.
Principles
Documented process
It explains how it was designed and why, so others can follow it.
Invention
The artifact contributes something new.
Relevance
It argues why the future the artifact proposes is better than the present one.
Extensible
Others can build on what was learned.
How it’s done
Pose a question that cannot be answered by observation alone.
Design and build an artifact that explores it.
Document what was learned so it is useful beyond the project.
Applications in design
When to use it
In research, when you want to explore what something that doesn’t exist yet could be like.
Avoid
Calling any design project research without documenting what was learned.
Don’t fall for it
Write down what you want to learn before prototyping: the result is knowledge, not just an object, and it has to be shared.
Connections
Builds on
Authors and works
- 1993
Christopher Frayling
Distinguished research into, for, and through art and design.
- 2007
John Zimmerman, Jodi Forlizzi, and Shelley Evenson
Proposed how to carry out and evaluate this kind of research in interaction design.
Sources
Original sources
- Frayling, C. (1993). Research in art and design. Royal College of Art Research Papers, 1(1), 1–5. View source: Frayling, C. (1993)
- Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Evenson, S. (2007). Research through design as a method for interaction design research in HCI. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’07) (pp. 493–502). ACM. View source: Zimmerman, J., Forlizzi, J., & Evenson, S. (2007)
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