From draft to discovery: A journey of creative rigour and reflection

I have worked in the design and architecture field for the last 13 years, winning design competition awards and completing built works through my design practice. Each design project involves collecting and comparing reference materials, developing a design objective, iterating through the design process, and culminating it into a design outcome for the world. I am also an early career academic, where I research design behaviour and teach students how to be more rigorous and critical in their design processes. Straddling these two worlds has given me a unique opportunity to immerse myself independently in each, and still be able to enhance both practices with insights from the other. While I do not claim that design is easily comparable to research, there are many similarities and learnings within the design process that I see as advantageous for research. Therefore, I reflect on my experience as a design practitioner and an academic to question: How as a designer, does 1) working with ambiguous problems, 2) prioritising prototyping, and 3) failing forward, enhance my research approaches as an academic? Through a self-study narrative, and referencing a completed design project that also culminated into a research paper, I begin by describing how research rigour becomes a catalyst for growth as a designer, specifically the process of Research for, into, and Through Design. I then discuss how adopting a designer’s mindset, specifically design framing and reflection-in-action, has unlocked my fixed views of what research can be. Finally, I offer key strategies for researchers to consider when attempting to ‘unstuck’ themselves in rigid research situations and how to be more comfortable with ambiguous situations.

keywords: career construction

• year: February 2024 – ongoing