Abstract
Working within an interdisciplinary, collaborative context to bring research into design practice offers both challenges and opportunities in building strategic alliances for a common purpose, integrating methods of research, and transferring or translating the resulting knowledge into action. Integrating multiple methods requires an iterative, complementary approach to the design of research, characterised by the need for effective communicative strategies throughout the process. Two of the responsibilities inherent in applied research are to undertake useful research and to report it in ways that are accessible to people working in different disciplines, and usable in practice. We centre our discussion on three of our learner-centred studies, in which we integrated methods from applied developmental science, information design and instructional technology and to explore the design and use of Web sites and an interactive encyclopedia.
Citation
Takach, B., Daniels, J., and Varnhagen, C. (2002) Putting it all together: bringing interdisciplinary research to the practice of designing interactive learning tools, in Durling, D. and Shackleton, J. (eds.), Common Ground - DRS International Conference 2002, 5-7 September, London, United Kingdom. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2002/researchpapers/70
Putting it all together: bringing interdisciplinary research to the practice of designing interactive learning tools
Working within an interdisciplinary, collaborative context to bring research into design practice offers both challenges and opportunities in building strategic alliances for a common purpose, integrating methods of research, and transferring or translating the resulting knowledge into action. Integrating multiple methods requires an iterative, complementary approach to the design of research, characterised by the need for effective communicative strategies throughout the process. Two of the responsibilities inherent in applied research are to undertake useful research and to report it in ways that are accessible to people working in different disciplines, and usable in practice. We centre our discussion on three of our learner-centred studies, in which we integrated methods from applied developmental science, information design and instructional technology and to explore the design and use of Web sites and an interactive encyclopedia.