Читать книгу Researching in the Age of COVID-19 Vol 3 - Группа авторов - Страница 12

The key argument of this chapter is that design methods, through careful repurposing and intentional application, can be imaginatively adapted into research methods and fruitfully contribute to methodological innovation. We close with four notes on the use of design methods in transdisciplinary research collaborations:

• Rather than a literal transfer as implied by the claim that design methods ‘can stand as research methods in their own right’ (Haseman, 2007, our italics), a creative process of translation seems crucial to deconstruct and re-​assemble a method for a different purpose. This demands creative contributions from designerly researchers to identify the tensions and figure out appropriate ways to surface the research potential of particular design methods.

• A recurring effect in the adaptation of design methods for research is the prioritization of human, ecological and ethical concerns as constitutive of all research activity. Notably, design methods lead to a commitment towards participatory and n-​disciplinary (multi/​ inter/​ cross/​ trans) approaches preoccupied not only with what is, but with what could/​should be, including the futures made possible by the effects of the research activity at hand.

• Collaboration between researchers and designers with expertise in a range of methods is recommended to better navigate the wicked systemic problems and messy social situations such as those made visible in crises like the COVID-​19 pandemic. However, such expertise may be insufficient until collaborators are able to bring advanced reflective capacities in and on their design and research practice (Vaughan, 2017).

• The attentive and deliberate effort needed to develop design-​based research methods will be enhanced by more researchers working across disciplinary boundaries. Social researchers working across qualitative, action-​oriented and post-​qualitative methodologies can bring designing (visualising, speculating, co-​creating) to innovatively adapt established research methods. Similarly, design researchers developing design-​based research methods can learn from ethnographic and phenomenological methods, participatory and action research practices and grounded theory protocols to more deeply understand how design might contribute to methodological innovation.

The re-​imagining of design methods as research methods allows the contribution of design to be about more than the aesthetics of research communication (such as dissemination videos) or the innovation of applied artefacts (such as ergonomic devices). Design-​based research methods work with the design activity of framing (Dorst, 2015) and (re)framing to interrogate the way a research situation is named and acted upon, the way a research question evolves and how underlying assumptions can be made visible and possible futures imagined. This integrative capacity of design to fix and propose, to work across people and systems, between solutions and speculation, within the known and the unknown, can contribute across all phases of a research programme.

Our experience defined by the sudden and unprecedented effects of the COVID-​19 pandemic has made evident the merits and challenges that come from deploying design-​based methods in transdisciplinary research contexts. The value of design to quickly make tangible, to creatively see another way forward, to productively make in the face of uncertainty, underscores the contribution of a material, iterative, action-​oriented practice in a time of multiple moving parts and potential paralysis. However, equally the impulse to act, the reliance on learning from prototyping in the world and the invitation to imagine anew, were not always appropriate responses in a context open to disastrous unintended consequences from ill-​considered moves. It is clear that research responses to the global pandemic call for well-​considered transdisciplinary collaborations, for interventions that rely on equal parts creative and critical thinking to ensure we act ethically, responsibly and with care.

We humbly recognize that design-​based research methods are only a small part of what might support this collective effort, and equally argue for design researchers learning from the depth of expertise of disciplines working in other social and applied spaces. The focus here on methods does not prevent critical examination of the epistemological and ontological dispositions we bring to our research practice. We have learned that methods and dispositions are mutually constitutive. The space an ethnographer creates to attune to a place of fieldwork is as critical as the sensory methods they use whilst on site, just as a design researcher’s learned ability to sense potential in a workshop idea is intrinsically tied to the success of the storymaking activity. Whether we observe how the world is or imagine how the world might be, the lived experiences and the cultural and disciplinary orientations we bring to our research inherently inform how we adopt, adapt and apply these methods (Grocott and Sosa, 2018). This is why our commitment to humility, reciprocity and generosity forms the core methodological principle we bring to innovative transdisciplinary collaborations.