Lecture Notes 11: What is Research? Pt 1

• Context is everything.
• "Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we're going, but we will know we want to be there."
• Process is more important than the outcome.
• Research into all different aspects of your creative practice.
• A creative practice that constantly develops as you move along, it can never stagnate.
• "Success comes from having brighter ideas closer together."
• You gotta fail before you can succeed.
• Ideas are the currency which you build and buy your future.
• Chance favours the connected mind.
• Integration of written and practical practices.
• There is a conscious or subconscious search for inspiration from external sources, from surroundings, media, discussions, libraries, etc.
• The main concern here is the development of analogies and associative approaches, which are then further developed into individual solutions.
• Brainstorming is about really making connections (Hence why we tend to start with mindmaps during the planning process)
• Stimulate the approach to ideas.
• Systematic Approach: By structuring and restructuring, enlarging and reducing, combing and extracting, replacing, adding, mirroring or reproducing.
• Intuitive Approach (What most of us have already):
  Development of thought process, which is primarily based on internalised perceptions and knowledge, that is to say an internal repertoire of ideas. This type of though process may occur spontaneously, without being evoked specially. This is actually a systematic process.
• Research is the process of finding facts, provable outcomes.
• The process of finding out how, why, what, who.. and maybe when?
• It involves collecting information from a variety of sources.
• The process taken into research will effect the outcomes of the project.
• There is also experimenting, discussing and analysing all that information.
• Primary Research:
  Research that is developed and collected for a specific end use, usually generated to help solve a specific problem. It involves the collection of data that does not yet exist.
• Secondary Research:
  Published or recorded data that have already been collected for some purpose other than the current study.
  The analysis of research that has been collected at an earlier time (For reasons unrelated to the current project)
• Quantitive Research:
  Deals with facts, figures, and measurements, and produces data which can be readily analysed. Measurably data is gathered from a wide range of sources, and it is the analysis and interpretations of the relationships across this data that gives the information researchers are looking for.
  Generates numerical data or data that can converted into numbers.
  Measurable data.
  Research that is objective and relies on statistical analysis, such as surveys.
• Qualitative Research:
  Explores and TRIES to understand people's beliefs, experiences, attitudes, behaviour and iterations. It generates non-numerical data. The best-known qualitative methods of inquiry include in-depth interviews, focus groups, documentary analysis and participant observation.
  Capturing people's thoughts and emotions as data.
  A way to study people or systems by interacting with and observing the subjects regularly.
• Information is the result of processing, manipulating and organizing data in a way that adds to the knowledge of the person receiving it.
• Info should be sufficient, competent, relevant, and useful.
• -> Assimilation <-> Development <-> Communication <-> General Study <->
• Phase 1 Assimilation
  The accumulation and ordering of general information and information specifically related to the problem in hand.
• Phase 2 General Study
  The investigation of the nature of the problem
  The investigation of possible solutions or means of solution.
• Phase 3 DevelopmentThe development and refinement of one or more of the tentative solutions isolated during phase 2.
• Phase 4 Communication
  The communication of one of more solutions to people either inside or outside the design team.
• <-> Assimilation <-> Development <-> Communication <-> General Study <->
• Identify background information
• <-> Analysis <-> Research <-> Evaluation <-> Solution <->
• Start anywhere, because, does it really matter where you start?