Meta-levels in design research: Resolving some confusions

摘要: Doing design and doing research are related activities. When in a (PhD) project, number of confusions pop up. These stem from the fact that most basic terms, such as ‘designer’, ‘research’, ‘product’, have many connotations but not shared definition. Because often happens multi-disciplinary context, can be even larger, each discipline brings its own associations to discussion without making them explicit. Especially when researchers build on skills themselves, conduct researchthrough- design, it difficult distinguish where how activities done create new particular solutions for users or generalizable knowledge discourse. We present visualization has helped clarify these issues by separating out different goals, roles, which we engage do research. It takes form diagram six meta-levels, at level an actor works develop both theoretical insight well practical application used next level. discuss helps separate roles persons, levels (academic practical) discourse, competing tensions within instance defending decision prototype serving goals cost utility vice versa.