This course guides students to understand what constitutes a Master’s level design research thesis. It focuses on helping them formulate a research question, explore its theoretical and historical underpinnings and develop a methodology for studying it.
The course takes the position that there are many approaches to design research, and properly structured, design itself can be a form of research. We will explore this through a series of readings that will present design research in its breadth. We will also take up reviewing other graduate theses produced at the School to understand what made them successful or not. Finally we will spend time developing parts of the student’s thesis including its research question, abstract, literature/precedent review and method of inquiry.
The course recognizes different approaches to the thesis taken by the Graduate Research Groups (GRG): Ecological Practices, Inclusive Design, Material Culture, Situated Technologies and Urban Design. We will address these through our analysis of previous theses executed in the groups and in the framework of our readings. The GRGs encourage interdisciplinary engagements with design which provide a rich array of additional methods and criteria. We will explore how best to navigate these to bring important issues up in the thesis.
