Towards the formulation of a research question: guidance through the glass bead game of research design

The notion that there might be a template, some kind of script detailing a plan for action, which can be transferred from one research project to another, does have some appeal. Research processes, however, are not that prescriptive. Design research, furthermore, straddles very different approaches to research and will ask different kinds of questions when studying: designers in practice, aspects in design history, critical design, research as design and other fields in the design research canon. Each project will have its own research design, detailing a researcher’s reasoning in the selection and application of theory and methods in a particular way to address a specific research question. The notion then of applying a model or ‘boilerplate’ that can be universally mapped onto any research project is misleading, without oversimplifying the work that is involved in the production and presentation of knowledge (preparation of knowledge work). Design, like any other field of inquiry, is in the midst of debate in the philosophy of science. Given changes in philosophic fashion this debate is necessarily incomplete (White, 2011 p.xv). Design research it has also been argued has its own nature (Archer, 1995, Dilnot, 1998)