I chose to do the Semantic Resources project because the project description was open to further scoping in areas of interest to the student. Furthermore, I am interested profound meaning in design, and product semantics is one of the fundamental spaces in which a designer can maneuver and let products acquire meaning.
The open project description and the research nature of the project initially presented me with some difficulties. The approach to this semester's project differed greatly from my usual approach to design projects, which is categorized by an often somewhat chaotic and a very intuitive way of working. In design projects, I have learned to be confident enough in my abilities to trust this process. This is also why I was somewhat insecure of my abilities in the design research domain, which resulted in a lack of decision making during the first half of the semester. I attempted to scope the project in what I initially considered a "research way": by conducting an extensive literature review covering many topics related to the project's domain of the Smart Environment. I was able to identify many possible opportunities, but few resonated with me as a designer, and I was unable to justify a decision for a certain design direction. I experienced difficulties thinking in terms of research questions as extensions of design opportunities.
It was only when I approached the scoping of the project as I have learned I work best in design projects that I was able to specify a specific area of interest. In design projects, I work best by reacting upon something (an existing design, an observation, etc.) that intrigues me, and turn this "upside down" in order to explore a radical alternative. Approaching the project in this way, by reacting upon the design created by the project's clients, I was able to develop a concrete goal for the project related to a design opportunity. My project then became focussed around the design of an alternative approach to the networking of devices in the smart living room based on my original interest for choosing the project, product semantics.
I proceeded to focus my literature research on the area of product semantics, to find a theoretical grounding for my initial idea inspired by parasitic/symbiotic relationships between devices. Reviewing the theories that have been developed since roughly the 60's on, I found that the theory focussed on single products and the communicative elements or opportunities of their form as an independent entity. Surprisingly little discourse has been produced which attempts to explain the semantics of form in the context of an ecology, which is precisely the context in which I was trying to find theoretical grounding for my design. For example, in Klaus Krippendorff's book "The Semantic Turn", the chapter on product semantics is virtually limited to an explanation of relationships within an ecology from a biological perspective. Although this further strengthened my feeling that a research project that aimed to investigate product semantics in an ecology of products could be promising, it did not provide me with a theoretical framework for my design.
Through further research into product semantics, I found some theories that borrow principles of perception from Gestalt psychology to differentiate between various form elements in a product's form. Diving deeper into Gestalt psychology this led me to the Gestalt Laws of Prägnanz. As these laws apply across cultures and are based on fundamental holistic and self-organizing tendencies of the brain, they appeared as ideal in visualizing the invisible and I proceeded to use them as the foundation for my design.
As I wanted my research to be focussed on the application of these laws, formed on the basis of the perception of 2D shapes, into a 3D product context, I created a design that was extremely basic. By excluding (interaction) design details from the concept, I would be able to focus purely on exploring opportunities for these Laws to be applied in system design. The video prototypes (see below), allowed me to have full control over the functionality of the system, making sure that technical difficulties or usability problems would not compromise my data regarding the underlying principles I was researching.
I was able to apply the understanding, and to some extent the skills, that I had acquired in qualitative research over the course of the module on this topic I had participated in halfway during the semester, to extract and process the experiment data.
Postponing the user experiment until immediately after the end-term exhibition was somewhat of a risk, but in my opinion my own development as well as the quality of my research would benefit significantly from using non-expert participants. As I was able to conduct the experiment with a reasonable number of participants (15) and still had enough time to consolidate the data into meaningful and clear conclusions, I am happy that I took this risk.
I was initially intimidated by the research semester, but I can conclude that it was a valuable experience for me. Although I struggled with it at first, it taught me how to be more decisive in the design process. In a design project, I work more intuitively, but in this project I had to make sure that every step in both the process and final report were argumented and clear. Making every decision for a specific reason, rather than to reflect upon the decisions made and post-rationalize them as I sometimes would in a design project, allows me to communicate my process and result much more stronger. It is definitely an approach that I feel I have adopted. Although I think my intuitive way of working is a crucial element in my approach, attitude and work, having acquired more insight into the research oriented approach it will allow me to work through - and present - my process in the graduation project much better.
At the suggestion of the project's clients and coach, I will rewrite the research report in order to publish it as a paper. This process, including the implementation of the improvements suggested by the coach in the feedback, will help me to further strengthen my ability to communicate design decisions through solid argumentation.
I initially regretted the time spent in the first half of the semester, as it took me this considerable amount of time to settle on a concrete research topic and research question. However, I've come to understand that this is often an unavoidable part of a research project. Still, I think that if I would do a research project again, the experience I have gained in decision making, especially in the second half of the semester could speed this process up.