Lecture 8: What Is Research?

Experiential learning:

• Knowledge
• Analysis
• Comprehension
• Application
• Evaluation 
• Synthesis

Process is more important than outcome:

• “When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there”
• Without research, you will only ever do what you can already do and there will be no new ideas and development within the design industry. 
• We are problem solvers – form of research

Types of Research:

• PRIMARY RESEARCH – developed and collected for a specific end use, data that does not exist yet.
• SECONDARY RESEARCH – published or recorded data that already exists but we can then analyse the material and use it to enrich our output.
• QUANTATIVE RESEARCH – numerical data or data that can be converted into numbers. The gathering and analysing of measurable data. Research that is objective and relies on statistical analysis, such as surveys.
• QUALITATIVE RESEARCH – observation, opinion and interacting with people and finding out what they think. Research is involved in quality and the information gathered is not statistical, but gives an idea about the perceptions or views. Subjective?