Abstract
Case studies have for a long time been used in design research to provide ‘rich’ insight into successful or unsuccessful new product innovation. As a methodology it has often been cited as useful to derive site specific contexts where phenomena can be observed and reported by respondents in their working environment. Yet, in practice, the primary advantage of the design case study, its ability to reveal insight into ‘real-life’ contemporary phenomena (the here and now), set against a backdrop of critical incidents, happenings or events over time (temporality), often become it’s weakness in achieving valid and credible findings. Essentially it can be attacked on ontological grounds because it can accommodate multiple methods and techniques both positivist and phenomenological. A further complication is the common journalistic style of using a single case to make wider generalisations to a group as a whole. This paper seeks to address these problems and provides a practical framework to help design researchers derive empirically valid and reliable theory through case studies. The framework enables causal explanations to be described within the context from which they emerged with evidence to support each event as an incidence of that explanation.
Keywords
methodologies and methods of design research, case studies, causal connections, innovation and design groups.
Citation
Roworth-Stokes, S. (2006) Research Design in Design Research: a practical framework to develop theory from case studies, in Friedman, K., Love, T., Côrte-Real, E. and Rust, C. (eds.), Wonderground - DRS International Conference 2006, 1-4 November, Lisbon, Portugal. https://dl.designresearchsociety.org/drs-conference-papers/drs2006/researchpapers/26
Research Design in Design Research: a practical framework to develop theory from case studies
Case studies have for a long time been used in design research to provide ‘rich’ insight into successful or unsuccessful new product innovation. As a methodology it has often been cited as useful to derive site specific contexts where phenomena can be observed and reported by respondents in their working environment. Yet, in practice, the primary advantage of the design case study, its ability to reveal insight into ‘real-life’ contemporary phenomena (the here and now), set against a backdrop of critical incidents, happenings or events over time (temporality), often become it’s weakness in achieving valid and credible findings. Essentially it can be attacked on ontological grounds because it can accommodate multiple methods and techniques both positivist and phenomenological. A further complication is the common journalistic style of using a single case to make wider generalisations to a group as a whole. This paper seeks to address these problems and provides a practical framework to help design researchers derive empirically valid and reliable theory through case studies. The framework enables causal explanations to be described within the context from which they emerged with evidence to support each event as an incidence of that explanation.