Research Clarification
3.7 Formulating Overall Research Plan
• How can a distributed decision-making process be supported to continuously increase project performance? (Q5)
Figure 3.16 Aims against stages, after Eriksson (2007)
3.7.2 Visualisation Exercise
A particular problem we noticed is the ability to communicate the ideas about the deliverables. Even in an early stage, most researchers will have an image of what they want to achieve. However, this often remains implicit, making it difficult to judge the viewpoint and assumptions underlying the identified problem and research plan. The so-called Visualisation Exercise, proposed by Mogens M.
Andreasen, provides a very good technique to make ideas and views explicit by visualising the concepts or outcomes mentioned in the research plan, using models, schemes, scenarios, and other graphical means, and to reflect on and discuss the result. In this early stage, it is useful to consider variants of these visualisations to avoid fixation on an initial idea. This exercise should be used in all stages of the research project. Note that the Impact Model shows the impact of the outcome, but not the intended outcome (the support) itself. The visualisation exercise is intended to show the intended outcome.
An example illustrates this exercise. A student planned to develop a methodology specifically for designing sports equipment. However, it was not clear from his description how sports equipment and its design is different from other products and design processes and hence requires a special methodology. He was therefore asked the following two questions in order to visualise his assumptions and views:
• Mention a typical sports equipment that has built-in medical, ergonomic, anthropometric, etc., knowledge, as this is what you said differentiated sports equipment from other products.
Research Clarification
Q3
Q5 Q4 Q2 Q1
Descriptive Study I
Prescriptive Study I
Descriptive Study II
Prescriptive Study II
Descriptive Study III
• Try to model how these peculiarities have influenced project strategy, team manning, process (special plans or activities), criteria, organisation, etc., in ways that are different from traditional ways.
The visualisation did not show the differences with other design processes. It became clear that there was not sufficient understanding about the typical types of knowledge required for developing sports equipment, and where and how these types of knowledge and the domains involved influence the process. The conclusion that a new methodology was required, seemed premature, and the research focus should be on gaining this understanding.
Other examples of visualisation requests that we have given to students are:
• Show an example of the content of your model of what you call ‘product assortment dispositions’, and show in a scenario how this understanding is used: by whom, for what, in what situation.
• Illustrate a family of products, their commonality and their variations.
Illustrate how you can reason ‘cross-family’ concerning manufacturability and life-cycle costs. What are actually life-cycle costs? What insight about the product life do you need to have in front of you?
• Show an example of data merging from different domains and how this would tell about what you call ‘maturity and assembly capability’. If possible, show what more is known if higher maturity is achieved.
• Your guideline on patient safety will contain some type of system model that shall instruct, motivate and orientate the guideline user. This model may become the essential part of your research. Show us such a guideline!
• The ‘form development process’ of automobiles may be seen as a combination of an industrial design process focusing upon appearance (controlled by quality of form, reliability of form, etc.) and other processes, mainly technical. Make an activity model showing these parallel processes, to show what goes on in the industrial design processes and the other processes, and to show their goals or criteria. Show where in this model your framework shall operate.
As these examples show, the visualisation questions focus on the terminology and concepts used. The true content of these often remain implicit. Having ‘more knowledge’ about maturity, e.g., does not show what sort of knowledge this entails, or at which level of detail. Similarly, a ‘guideline’ may be very generic or very specific. In this stage it is not possible to exactly know the outcomes, but there has to be a vision about the sort of outcome that is expected, knowing very well that this vision might not be correct. Making it explicit at least allows discussion about the vision.
3.7.3 Reflection on RC
Before the RC stage is completed, the following checklist may be useful to reflect on the deliverables of this stage:
• Why do you ask this research question?
• Why do you believe this is a relevant research question?
• Why do you believe that you have or can obtain the competences to answer the research questions and solve, or contribute to solving, the identified problem?
• Where do you believe that you can be original, i.e., your results can bring a contribution to practice as well as to knowledge?
• Why do you believe your Overall Research Plan leads to a result?
• Why do you believe your work is scientific?
Oliver (1991) provides some heuristics of how to recognise an important contribution to science. One is that the contribution will significantly change the ways of thinking or working of others in the area. A researcher can recognise whether their contribution is important, amongst others, by checking if their results not only evaluate favourably to their own data but conforms well to other well- known information, or even more, if it can relate data previously unfamiliar to the researcher. The more diverse and numerous the compatible but previously unknown data is, the greater the chances are of the discovery being a major one.