/ BooksDesign Driven Doctoral Research STRATEGIES
The first CA2RE+ book identifies the long-term development goals and potentials of Design-Driven Doctoral Research. It addresses research done within the proliferating research-by-design field and situates DDDr in an academic context of research. The STRATEGIES book examines the potential of DDDr to build bridges between academic research and professional creative practices. How can DDDr contribute to understanding creative processes that deal with ‘wicked problems’ and undefined outcomes? How can design-driven research contribute to better design processes and better design solutions?
As DDDr is a recently established research field, the book examines how research questions are articulated or discovered, how research methodologies are created, how supervision takes place and how evaluation is carried out. The book identifies exemplary research practices and methodological gaps for further development in the second and third CA2RE+ books. The book also examines DDDr in the context of national academic research frameworks. It identifies standards, practices and conditions in local research traditions to explore qualities and potentials. It discusses how the community and shared supervision model of CA2RE+ can build and expand on these traditions to strengthen collaborations build on respect for local identities.
The Strategy book introduces DDDr on different levels: from international perspectives, national contexts, and individual research. The plural STRATEGIES in the title of the book is understood on several planes. It seeks innovation in DDDr in an academic and professional context; it aims to learn and support local research traditions. It also looks for specific strategies used by doctoral fellows and supervisors to develop design-driven research. The book builds on presentations and discussions from the first two CA2RE+ intensive study programmes that focus on OBSERVATION and SHARING. It contains contributions from doctoral fellows, supervisors and administrators from CA2RE+ partners. External reporters and guests contribute from external perspectives. The book includes examples of PhD work to give specific examples of their research findings, methodologies and contributions. The STRATEGIES book is a richly illustrated anthology of meta-level reflections, testimonials and samples. The aim is to present the strategies of CARE+ and DDDr in an engaging and inspiring way that identifies the potential for development and innovation and suggests ways forward. The book’s target group is academics, organisers of doctoral programmes, administrators, creative professional practitioners, organisational bodies with design and the arts and current or potential postgraduate fellows.
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Design Driven Doctoral Research EVALUATION
The second CA2RE+ book discusses and identifies questions, challenges and potentials relating to processes and procedures of evaluation in Design-Driven Doctoral Research. It develops this topic by addressing and reflecting on presentations and experiences identified at the CA2RE+ events. It builds on the diagnostics and examples of the first CA2RE+ book. It also discusses evaluation in a more comprehensive academic perspective with comparisons and references to how other research fields within the humanities and the social and technical sciences evaluate research to ensure quality and relevance.
The EVALUATION book examines the concept of evaluation in the framework of DDDr. The explorative and creative nature of this type of research often results in singular or even subjective research contributions. This nature raises challenges to setting up transferable and transparent evaluation procedures. But it also creates opportunities to compare, exchange and learn from other fields of research. More articulated evaluation procedures furthermore hold the potential to contribute to a better understanding of the value and relevance of design processes.
The EVALUATION book discusses the concept of evaluation in DDDr from different perspectives. It contributes to the development of more transparent and rigorous evaluation procedures within the fields of creative, artistic, design-driven and practice-based research and help the young research field to mature. It unfolds this in a broader academic context. The book provides a framework that allows doctoral fellows, supervisors and administrators to understand the scope and aim of DDDr better. It provides perspectives on national assessment procedures and criteria and how DDDr can adapt to local differences. The book also offers insight to evaluation from the standpoint of the individual doctoral fellow. It provides examples of how doctoral fellows set up research processes to evaluate the outcome of their design-driven research.
The book primarily builds on presentations and discussions from the third and fourth CA2RE+ intensive study programmes focusing on COMPARISON and REFLECTION. It contains contributions from doctoral fellows, supervisors and administrators from the eleven partners in CA2RE+. It includes contributions by external reporters and guests, who provide overall views of research, external perspective, general reflections on the relevance of what they experience as invitees to the presentation. It contains examples of PhD work, aimed to give specific examples of their research findings, methodologies and contributions.
Please feel free to check the final version!
Design Driven Doctoral Research FRAMEWORK
The third CA2RE+ book collects and contextualises the findings of the CA2RE+ network. It presents conclusions and forward trajectories. It establishes DDDr in the growing field of research-by-design and identify contributions and parallels with a broader area of related academic fields.
The FRAMEWORK book offers a reformulation of the methodology of design-driven research, along with guidelines and recommendations for the introduction, evaluation, and development of design-driven doctorate programs, based on the design-driven doctorates that have been undertaken at universities and investigated during the CA2RE+ Strategic Partnership events. Overall, FRAMEWORK offers an initial assessment of the project as a whole and, from this assessment, develops a guide for design-driven doctorates in the context of collective learning environments in the design disciplines, as well as other academic fields, such as the social sciences and the humanities.
The authors of the third book, FRAMEWORK, reflect on and review the experiences and findings of the CA2RE network with the following goals, depending on the respective target group: For PhD students, the book outlines the conditions and prospects of structured, multidisciplinary, and international research in the context of doctoral studies. For supervisors, it makes recommendations on the supervision and evaluation of design-driven research methods. For decision-makers at universities, in administration, and politics, it offers suggestions for the introduction, implementation, and evaluation of design-driven research methods.
The book builds on presentations and discussions from all the six CA2RE+ intensive study programmes in Ghent, Trondheim, Milan, Hamburg, Ljubljana, and Delft. It focuses mainly on the last two events with the topics ‘Reformulation’ and ‘Recommendation’. The book supplements this material with the multimedia database and the two previously published books, STRATEGIES and EVALUATION.
The book contains contributions from doctoral fellows, supervisors and administrators from the eleven partners in CA2RE+. It includes contributions by external reporters and guests, who provide overall views of research, external perspectives, general reflections on the relevance of what they experience as invitees to the presentation. The book’s authors reflect on their recommendations and compare them with those of other authors in the relevant literature. Finally, the book contains examples of PhD work, aimed to give specific examples of their research findings, methodologies and contributions.
Please feel free to check the final version! It is also available in the TU Berlin repository.
