Design Research Methodology - Research Proposal

September 07, 2022

Design Research Methodology - Research Proposal

1/9/2022 - 22/9/2022 (Week 1 - Week 4)

Anna Chin Siaw Fong / 0354370
Design Research Methodology / Bachelor of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
Research Proposal

LECTURES

Week 1

What is research?

The systematic and creative investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.
Increase the stock of knowledge, including knowledge of humans, culture and society, and the use of this stock of knowledge to devise new applications.
Research is the pursuit of knowledge.
Student research is self-directed work in which students from all areas of study work individually or as part of a team to explore issues of interest to them.
Students and faculty mentors work together to design and implement a research, scholarly, or creative project and then communicate the results to others.

Why should I do research?

Research expands understanding and knowledge of your academic field.
It defines your academic, career, and personal interests.
You establish valuable connections with faculty.
You gain academic experiences that help expand your resume, such as presenting at research conferences, publishing, and working with a research team.
You develop critical thinking, leadership, time management, and communication skills.
You get to explore research techniques.

How should I start?

Identify your field of interest. You might become curious about more than one topic through your courses, current events, or by reflecting on things that appeal to you. Reading up writings in some current design magazines might help too.
After you have selected your field of interest/topic, delve into further research about it to establish an area (research problem) where you are interested to conduct research about.
Write a bit more extensively about the research problem in the form of a statement.
Formulate a research question that is derived from the research problem.
Identify research objective(s) that you would like to achieve from conducting this research.

Week 2

Problem statement

A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon.
It identifies the gap between the current (problem) state and desired (goal) state of a process or product.
A problem statement paves the way for the reader to understand the research problem.

Research question

A research question is an answerable inquiry into a specific concern or issue. It is the initial step in a research project.
The ‘initial step’ means after you have established the research problem in the form of a statement, the research question is the first active step in the research project.
A research question is the ground of the foundation of your research. It is what everything in a research project is built on. Without a question, you can't have a research and discussion.
If your foundation is built on something shifty, like a house built on sand, then everything following that will be about correcting that initial issue instead of on making an awesome research project.
Writing a good research question means you have something you want to study. Let's say you're interested in the effects of television. We will examine the steps and then look at how you could write a research question.

Specify your specific concern or issue
Decide what you want to know about the specific concern or issue
Turn what you want to know and the specific concern into a question
Ensure that the question is answerable
Check to make sure the question is not too broad or too narrow

This is the basic process in writing a research question. Writing a good question will result in a better research project.

Research objective

In general, research objectives describe what we expect to achieve by a project.
Research objectives may be linked with a hypothesis or used as a statement of purpose in a study that does not have a hypothesis.
Even if the nature of the research has not been clear to the layperson from the hypotheses, s/he should be able to understand the research from the objectives.
A statement of research objectives can serve to guide the activities of research. Consider the following examples.

Objective: To describe what factors farmers take into account in making such decisions as whether to adopt a new technology or what crops to grow.
Objective: To develop a budget for reducing pollution by a particular enterprise.
Objective: To describe the habitat of the giant panda in China.

In example no. 1, the research will end the study by being able to specify factors which emerged in household decisions.
In example no. 2, the result will be the specification of a pollution reduction budget.
In example no. 3, creating a picture of the habitat of the giant panda in China.

Hypothesis

A hypothesis is a tentative statement about the relationship between two or more variables. It is a specific, testable prediction about what you expect to happen in a study.
For example, a study designed to look at the relationship between sleep deprivation and test performance might have a hypothesis that states, "This study is designed to assess the hypothesis that sleep-deprived people will perform worse on a test than individuals who are not sleep deprived.“
Unless you are creating a study that is exploratory in nature, your hypothesis should always explain what you expect to happen during the course of your experiment or research.
Remember, a hypothesis does not have to be correct. While the hypothesis predicts what the researchers expect to see, the goal of the research is to determine whether this guess is right or wrong. When conducting an experiment, researchers might explore a number of factors to determine which ones might contribute to the ultimate outcome.
In many cases, researchers may find that the results of an experiment do not support the original hypothesis. When writing up these results, the researchers might suggest other options that should be explored in future studies.

Variables

A variable is something that can be changed or varied, such as a characteristic or value. Variables are generally used in psychology experiments to determine if changes to one thing result in changes to another.
By systematically varying some variables and measuring the effects on other variables, researchers can determine if changes to one thing result in changes in something else.

Week 3

The Life Cycle of Research

Fig 1.0 The Life Cycle of Research

What is research question?

'Uncertainty’ about something in the population that the investigator wants to resolve by making measurements in the study population
Uncertainty = ‘data needs’
Clear question facilitates to

Choose the most optimal research design
Identify who should be included, what the outcomes should be, and when the outcomes need to be measured

Refining "ideas" into research questions

Begins with general uncertainty about a creative industry issue. Such as, sound design in low cost animation production.
Narrows down to a concrete, researchable issue

Translating uncertainty to research question

Frames problem in specific terms (Cultural Identity / Character for Animation)
Focuses on one issue
Is written in everyday language
Can use more than one verb, if needed
Should link the question to the potential action that would be taken once the question is answered
Is stated as a question!

Research question sets out

What the investigator or researcher wants to know
Not

What the investigator might do or
What the results of the study might ultimately contribute to that particular field of creative media

Sources of Research Question

Mastering the search of published literature

Continue review of work of others in the area of interest

Being alert to new ideas and techniques

Observe scholar and practitioner research outcomes / conferences / pod cast and other forms of publication.
Having a skeptical attitude about prevailing beliefs
Applying new technologies to old issues

Keeping the imagination roaming

Careful observation; teaching and learning, tenacity

Your supervisor or peer as guide/mentor

Two categories of research questions

Descriptive questions

Involve observations to measure quantity
No comparison groups / interventions

Analytical question

Involve comparisoins / interventions to test a hypothesis

Steps in conceiving a research question

Review of state-of-art information
Raise a question
Decide worth investigating by peer-review
Define measurable exposures & outcomes
Sharpen the initial question
Refine the question by specifying details

Good research questions should pass the 'so what?' test

Feasible

Adequate number of participants, technical expertise & resources

Interesting
Novel

Confirms, refutes or extends previous findings
Provides new information

Ethical

Amenable to a study that ethics committee will approve

Relevant

Advance creative media knowledge, improve practice, influence policy (broadcasting, information and cyber law)

Statement of research hypothesis

A specific version of research question

Summarizes main elements of study
Establishes basis for test(s) of statistical significance

Main elements : Sample, Exposures and Outcomes

Stated for analytical questions with comparison groups

For research questions with terms: greater or less than, causes, leads to, compared with, more likely than, associated with, related to, similar to or correlated with

Purely descriptive questions DO NOT require hypothesis

Characteristics of good hypothesis

Simple

One exposure
One outcome

Specific

No ambiguity about study participants / variables

Stated in advance

Written at outset
Focused on primary objective

Translating research question to objective

Frame in systematic creative terms
Take the question in a few limited axis
Write in systematic creative language
Make use of no more than one verb for each
Sort as primary and secondary
Be clear about the type of question:

Descriptive questions (Measuring a quantity)
Analytical/experimental questions (Testing a hypothesis)

Objectives for descriptive vs. analytical studies

Descriptive: Estimating a quantity

Use the verb “Estimate”

Analytical: Testing a hypothesis

Use the verb “Determine”

Asking yourself the right question

Two ways to deal with a poor or irrelevant research question:

Try to answer it

The answer may be of no use of anyone
There may be no answer

Try to reframe it

If your research question is wrong:

No good hard work will save your work

If your research question is right:

You have an opportunity to do a good job

Inductive Approach

When there is little to no existing literature on a topic, it is common to perform inductive research because there is no theory to test. The inductive approach consists of three stages:

Observation
Observe a pattern
Develop a theory

Limitations: A conclusion drawn on the basis of an inductive method can never be proven, but still, the larger your dataset, the more reliable the conclusion.

Deductive Approch

When conducting deductive research, you always start with a theory (the result of inductive research). Reasoning deductively means testing these theories. If there is no theory yet, you cannot conduct deductive research. The deductive research approach consists of four stages:

Start with an existing theory
Formulate a hypothesis based on that theory
Collect data to test that theory
Analyse the results: does the data reject or support the hypothesis?

Limitations:The conclusions of deductive reasoning can only be true if all the premises set in the inductive study are true and the terms are clear.

INSTRUCTIONS

Research Proposal

Week 1

Students were given briefing for the module. After that, we were tasked to confirm our specialization. After confirming our specialization, we can start our research proposal by doing research about topics that we were interested in. I was interested in product packaging and consumers' brand perception. Therefore, I decided to head to that direction for my research.

Week 2

We needed to prepare a google document and show our progress of our research proposal to Dr. Jinchi. We needed to provide a rationale for choosing our area of research.

Fig 2.0 Week 2 Research Proposal Progress

- 8/9/2022 -

Week 3

After providing a rationale, we were to provide the problem statement, research questions and research objectives.

Fig 2.1 Week 3 Research Proposal Progress

- 15/9/2022 -

Week 4

Today was the last day to receive feedback from Dr. Jinchi and touched up our research proposal before submitting it in Google Classroom. After getting feedback, I made all the necessary changes and updated my research proposal.

Fig 2.2 Week 4 Research Proposal Progress

- 22/9/2022 -

Final Research Proposal Submission

Fig 2.3 Final Research Proposal

- 23/9/2022 -

FEEDBACK

Week 2

Make sure to add reference for citations
Choose a type of product for your packaging design
Product chose should not be a necessity

Week 3

Need to add citations to my problem statement

Week 4

Try to avoid no date articles
Remember to always relate it back to your research problem
Be careful when mentioning about innovate. Refer it to graphic design innovation

REFLECTION

Writing a research proposal was a new thing for me. I realized that I have to do a lot of reading and research before I could start writing a proposal. I am not a fan of reading which lead me to hate doing research. Writing a research proposal is not as hard as it seems. It just requires a lot of reading and research which is something I had to endure with even though I did not like it. When I was doing my research proposal, I also had to be very mindful to not get out of topic. I was worried that the research paper that I found for my research proposal are not really related to my research topic. In the end, I still managed to complete my assignment with the guidance of Dr. Jinchi. I have learnt a lot from writing a research proposal and I am really grateful for that.

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Anna Chin Siaw Fong (0354370)

Design Research Methodology - Research Proposal

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