Matching Research Questions with a Research Methodology: Proposal for a Didactic Resource

Abstract

After conducting presentations and workshops about research methodologies with design doctoral students from different countries and universities over the last three years, the authors have noticed that students are usually eager to learn more about how to design a strong and coherent methodical research plan matching their research questions, and they favor (1) the organization of theoretical concepts into an easy to understand model, and (2) the exemplification of the model application through practical cases. Aiming to benefit an enlarged audience of PhD students, this paper summarizes the contents of one of those workshops, which took place in Lisbon, in November 2019. The paper starts by presenting the four-category design research classification model developed by the authors, which is designed to be open and flexible enough to potentially accommodate any kind of design research. Then, the role of ontological and epistemological assumptions underlying the research is discussed through an abbreviated description of four research paradigms. Following that, five examples of design research are presented and readers are challenged to reflect, by themselves, how these fit into the theoretical concepts presented before. Finally, the challenge’s answers are provided and discussed, showing how to distinguish and select between different methodological approaches suitable for academic design research.