Course Overview
DHE71401 Advanced Design Research & Techniques | Doctoral course
The aim of this doctoral course is for students to develop an understanding of and skills in collecting and analysing data relevant to design and design research. The course will cover research methods and approaches in design, data colection, ananlysis and sythesis in the presentation of findings.
Course objectives
On completion of this course students will be better able to understand a range of qualitative and quantitative methods in experiments, studies and field investigations for application in design research. They will be able to understand the meaning and application of a number of qualitative analytical frameworks and standard statistical tests. They will be introduced to software for both quantitative (SPSS) and qualitative (Nvivo) data analysis.
On completion of this course, students will have gained a greater understanding of the theoretical content of the selected methods. The application of the methods and ability to avoid common pitfalls, and be able to select appropriate methods and utilise them in answering practical research questions in pursuit of more appropriate design solutions.
Teaching apporach
Theory of qualitative data methodology will be explored and overviews of the role of statistics; levels of measurement, testing
hypotheses/research questions, presentation of data as well as
descriptive statistical techniques: t-tests, ANOVA, regression and
correlation for example. Survey methods and questionnaire design, interviewing (individual and group), protocol analysis, observational methods and software (SPSS and Nvivo) will also be covered in this course.
Student outcomes
Individual essay describing a design problem, using interview data analysis with Nvivo and questionnaire analysis using SPSS.
Answers to questions based on that analysis and on information covered by lectures
and prescribed reading, approx. 5000 words appendices maximum 10 pages, together with Class assignments & work-in-progress presentations.