Reflections: Design Research

The process of design research was interesting for me. I have a background in Business IT and as part of my final year project, I was required to write a proposal for a computer based application  that is supposed to solve a particular problem that I identify with, and I had to build what would be termed as a prototype and present this workable solution to that solution. While that was at a much smaller scale, there wasn't too much emphasis on the technicalities of carrying out the research as was with the paper we read by Haibo Li et al. It was however interesting to go back and rethink my previous project and study it in more depth with this new knowledge that I have.

From my own personal experience, I can say that prototyping is a very long and tedious process and sometimes frustrating especially if your predicted end-product is not forthcoming. All the other advantages and limitations mentioned in my previous post also hold.

The lecture with Haibo Li was very interesting. He talked about defining and solving problems as well as ideas. It was interesting to note that everything begins with an idea. This idea is then developed into something great or small...depending on the person with the idea and its purpose. Ideas form the basis for prototypes.

As a parting shot, I will remember something that Haibo mentioned in his presentation, "If a problem is well defined [spend 90% of time defining], you spend less time solving it [spend 10% of time].