Design Practice into Practice-led Research

Abstract

This paper appraises design practice as research, and how my own work has transformed into practice-led
research. I have worked as an academic and designer-maker of furniture and related products for more than 25
years. While I have gained much in personal new knowledge and insights I had not framed my design work as
research outputs until I began to explore practice-based submissions to the Research Excellence Framework
(REF).

Cross-referencing my practice with key texts and the practice-led research of others, I will discuss how design
outcomes and making processes can shape a rigorous research context.
I have embarked on new work as a vehicle for discussion in this paper: the investigation of making as thinking
through aluminium sand-casting with discarded packaging as waste moulds (see images). These pieces have
been selected for exhibition at the Making Research, Researching Making conference in Aarhus, but the making
process as a research methodology for post-graduate students, and as a research output for the REF will be
discussed in this paper.
Key stages of my making process – doing – have been captured in photographs and film, along with resulting
casts. The first prototypes have revealed new insights along with challenges, which are also opportunities. This
resonates with numerous sources on critical making* and I will share my personal demystification of this with
others seeking to re-shape their creative practices as research.

The UK REF 2014 definition of research is: “A process of investigation, leading to new insights, effectively
shared” (HEFCE 2011, p.21 – 22, p.48). Arguably, all creative practice is a process of investigation. It is clear is
that there is a prevailing academic view of knowledge in doing, and making as thinking in creative practice.
Serendipity and intuition are key components in practice-based/led creative research as they are in science.
However, creative practice is still struggling for acceptance as an equal to scientific epistemology, which has
been established for over three centuries (Gray & Malins 2004), while PhDs in art and design have only existed
for around 30 years (Ravelli et al, 2013, p396).

Donald Schön’s The Reflective Practitioner (1983) has supported the recognition of practice-led/based research
in design and the visual and performing arts. Schön discusses the notion of knowing by doing, describing how
practical expertise is knowledge. John Dunnigan’s essay on Thinking (2013) refers to “critical making” as the
“symbiotic relationship” between thinking and making, and describes artists and designers as “form givers who
bring ideas into the material world.” (Dunnigan, 2013, p.95). Dunnigan refers to embodied knowledge through
working with your hands...

‘In critical making, the very process itself opens up new possibilities for deep expansive thinking and the serious
enquiry that stimulates discovery.’ (Dunnigan, 2013, p.98)

Dunnigan does not cite Schön, but their viewpoints, along with Charny (2011), Frayling (2011), Margetts (2011),
Miller (2011), Ratto (2011), Ravelli et al (2013), Scharge (2013), Swann (2002) and, most notably of all, Ingold
(2009, 2013, 2015), are the same – there is knowledge in doing.