The development of design research from the 1960s onwards has led to the establishment of design as a coherent discipline of study in its own right, based on the view that design has its own things to know and its own ways of knowing them. Cross (1982) referred to design as a third culture in addition to the sciences and humanities. The values of design culture are practicality, empathy and concern for ‘appropriateness’. In recent years, it has been observed that a more established typology of design methodologies has been developed, employed, and validated as acceptable forms of research methodology for doctoral research. These methodologies have ranged from hybrid methodology, which employs a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods, to more practice-based methodology, achieved through critical design projects (Yee, 2010).
My research enquiry started as the result of my anxiety experienced during running design workshops where the topics were complex and included multiple viewpoints as well as different communities. I was questioning if my design practice was actually suitable for those kinds of situations. It felt too rooted in industry and work life in general. I felt that being an objective facilitator did not allow me to contribute effectively, and it was hard to stay in that role as a designer. So, the overall motive for research emerged from design practice, where the need and importance of designing with communities has been acknowledged but has proven to be challenging. As designers are already working with different communities, there is a need to develop further responsible and reflective design practices (e.g. Tunstall, 2013). I became especially interested in service design workshops because it is not possible to service design without people, and active collaboration with and by them happens many times in design workshops.
Because I was interested in studying design practice in service design workshops, and I believed it could only be done by placing yourself in the situation that you aim to understand, my research followed practice-based design research methodology (e.g. Vaughan, 2017). This methodology supported:
• Action, practice and learning from it,
• The study of service design workshops from different perspectives and • Working in the field with communities.
As design practice and research have moved to new areas further away from market-oriented business environments, it has been important to combine the methodologies of design with other methodologies that have foundations in the social, practice-based and collaborative domains. Saikaly (2005) described a practice-based type of inquiry as a ‘designerly mode of inquiry’. The rise of practice-based design research and doctoral studies taking advantage of it are connected to a profound transformation in how we understand, perform, critique and position design as individuals and as an interdisciplinary community of practice (Vaughan, 2017). New emergent design practice fields, such as service design, are playing a pivotal role in this phenomenon and calling for a new kind of designer who can undertake research with increasing sophistication. The recent developments in design research and doctoral studies have affected my research path as well. From the methodological perspective, I have been crafting my research and design practice side by side, and it has been developing from sub-study to sub-study. The articles have documented my journey of combining design, research and practice.
There are some basic elements that describe practice-based research enquiries. It is a larger category of research approaches that acknowledges the possibility that practitioners can do research; it can be valuable and results can be incorporated into their profession’s body of knowledge. The connection between practice and research is emphasised. In design, this has been the case for a long time, as in research through design (e.g. Frayling, 1993) and constructive design research (Koskinen et al., 2011) approaches. Additionally, practice-based methodologies support research that is being done in the ‘field’ and collaboratively. It brings forward particulars and details, not facts and singular truth. This is explanatory and exploratory research in which the researcher–practitioner (Schön, 1983) is involved, determines her/his ideas in connection to practice and can then make deductions about what is happening.
In the art and design field, the terms ‘practice-based’, ‘practice-led’ and ‘artistic’ research are often seen as interchangeable (Mäkelä & Nimkulrat, 2011). It is research that includes creative practice. An increasing number of studies and PhDs in design are labelled as specifically practice-based, using practice
as the basis of investigation. Cross (1999) noted that design research (referring to design PhDs) is inherently practice-led (i.e. deriving from design practice), either through studying the people, process or products.
Although design practice and research are tightly connected, the theoretical foundations for practice-based design research have been fragmented and published in different mediums for decades. In 2017, Vaughan edited a book called Practice-based Design Research, which gathered different researchers and academics who had made important contributions to the evolution of the field. The book highlights the connection of practice-based design research to doctoral education and PhD journeys. Yuille (2017) offered graduate’s reflections on the design PhD in practice. In his opinion, a practice-led PhD is not about creating solid knowledge and becoming an expert in it but rather about becoming aware of your becoming. This way, the practice you do and develop also starts to grow in interest and inquiry, leading to cycles that feed into explicit and disciplined reflective design practice.
My research has happened in design projects that offered a platform for reflection in-action and on-action. Service design workshops have been a concrete path for me to combine design practice (and process) with research practice (and process). I have collected the empirical data in workshops and in connection to practice. This way, practice has informed and influenced the choice of research methods as well as offered a place for iterative reflection about practice and its potential. In other words, my position as a researcher–practitioner–designer and my work in workshops have profoundly influenced the research and its outcomes. However, practice-based design research cannot draw upon a received and sanctioned set of research methods (Blythe & Stamm, 2017, p. 60). I have chosen and modified the methodology and methods in relation to practical projects and workshops. The practice-based methodology has supported my interest in understanding workshops as an integral part of design practice and research.
Practitioner–researchers have the skills and expertise in the actions required in their field to be able to undertake situated research within it (Vaughan, 2017, p. 10). Being a designer and possessing design expertise is the foundation for becoming a practitioner–researcher. My design expertise has been developing during my PhD journey. It is a collection of expertise that I already had when I started, such as using service design methods and facilitating workshops, but also new expertise in connection to that. The practice-based design research journey has challenged me to reflect on my practice as well as develop it from a researcher’s position. I have noticed that design skills can also be used to design the research practices that other professionals and I who run service design workshops with communities use.
In practice-based research, I have had a unique opportunity to become a part of many communities that are assembled for design projects and workshops
accordingly. The assemblages have been varied, multicultural, multilingual and multidisciplinary. Next, I will explain more specifically the data collection and analysis details and method choices that I made, and then present the contexts – ARTSMO, PARTY and GLiV – step by step.