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Every research method was first imagined and trialled by those who creatively devised new ways of studying the problems and topics of their interest. New methods and techniques have continuously emerged as part of the knowledge, experience and intuitions cultivated in research activity. At some stage, the new ideas and ways of working are developed, evolved and embraced by a community that forms around accepted beliefs, values and practices, including methods of inquiry. Across fields, there is a continuous flux of creativity in research, from small tweaks to more substantial departures (Kara, 2015). Creativity is ever present in research activity, from formulating a novel research question to framing original ways of approaching a topic of inquiry. On the other hand, creativity also finds opposition in research at the point where disciplinary identities become strongly associated with particular interpretations of methodological rigour within a particular discipline. A significant tension is thus visible between the evolution of methods against demands for integrity, accountability and credibility. Our complementary experiences in the field of design research lead us to reflect upon the nature of methods between academic research and design practice. More specifically, we have noticed how design methods help to creatively respond to challenges caused by the COVID-​19 pandemic to deepen participatory encounters, shift perspectives to see situations anew and navigate irreconcilable differences. In what follows we introduce design practices we are evolving as researchers, note the implications of translating design methods into research methods and identify the productive contribution of these design-​informed research methods to applied transdisciplinary inquiry.

In professional contexts, designers apply tools, techniques and methods that have been adopted and customized from multiple sources. The term ‘design method’ has had multiple meanings over the years. Here, we refer specifically to the tools and techniques that designers use to inform, guide and support design activity. Collections of design methods (Martin and Hanington, 2012; Kumar, 2013) show considerable variation in what is included, and what implicit criteria identify a design method. Designers refer to methods in general, such as sketching or prototyping, or in narrower categories, such as study sketches or annotated sketches and appearance models or functional models (Pei et al, 2011). Notably, a number of design methods have been appropriated from other fields and many repurposed to support design activity. Examples of design methods with origins from across academic and professional contexts include ‘design charrettes’, ‘morphology analysis’, ‘photo‐elicitation’ and ‘participant observation’ (Martin and Hanington, 2012). Other methods used in design have been radically transformed or created afresh, such as the widely-​used ‘Wizard of Oz’ interaction design method (Guindon, 1988). We resist casting a rigid definition of design methods given that new and old, foreign and endemic individuals and design communities have their own preferred practices, habits and terminologies (Pei et al, 2011).

Within the academy, design methods are used within methodologies of practice (based, led, oriented) research (Vaughan, 2017), often with the prevailing claim that design methods ‘used by the practitioner can stand as research methods in their own right’ (Haseman, 2007, our italics). The use of a practice method literally as a research method is well established in artistic disciplines, but this tradition often goes unexamined in design research. However, the focus in this chapter on the potential to translate design methods into social research locates the authors’ interest in methods ‘led by research’ over those ‘led by design’ (Sanders and Stappers, 2012). We critically examine here the synergies and possibilities creative design methods bring to transdisciplinary collaborations. The ways in which these design methods are used in social research deserves particular examination if these are to contribute to innovative research activity in times of crises. In addition, there are opportunities to consolidate a methodology for design research that is appropriate and distinct from quantitative, qualitative and artistic research.