Research is hard.

That’s what I’m learning as I simultaneously teach a lecture about design research and take a class about design research this semester (fall 2019) at the University of Cincinnati, DAAP. Why is research so hard? Because even though there are hundreds of six-step research (and design) models out there, the path to success is anything but linear.

It doesn’t help that designers, like myself and my students, are often coined “problem solvers” (as if no one else solves problems). The trouble is, designers usually jump over the problem into “solving” too fast. We want to fix, but we often don’t know enough about the issue to fix it. We’re impatient. Admittedly, ego is there too, convincing us we know enough to make something good enough.

Instead of problem solvers, designers should re-coin ourselves as problem investigators.

Imagine a movie or show about a criminal investigation There’s often a scene with an investigator in front of a board or wall full of photographs that have yarn strung between each them connecting leads. Usually, but not always, one person points to the next. Whether these “crazy walls” are Hollywood tropes, or not, the point is that the investigators keep following the crumbs until they have enough evidence to make an arrest. Until then, they stay curious, keen to where the scent leads.

Similarly, I remember listening to an interview on the Knowledge Project with V.C., Josh Wolfe. Josh said that when they learn about a potential investment, they use an app called Popplet. Popplet is a lot like the mind map of an investigator. Let’s say the Josh meets a subject matter expert on X (that’s a Popplet). That expert then points them to a book (that’s another Popplet). In the book, Josh learns that he should visit a project site (one more Popplet), and so on. Eventually, Josh becomes an expert. That’s when he can decide whether or not to make an investment. He could probably write a book about the topic at this point.

In these anecdotes, there’s no predefined step by step process. The key ingredient appears to be curiosity and the ability to restrain one’s self from making a conclusion too quickly. Easier said than done. 

This semester, as a teacher, I’ve witnessed the faces of undergrad students as they realized that they jumped to a conclusion too fast. The very next day I’d find myself doing the same thing as a student in the master’s program.

Part of the difficulty, again, is due to being trained designers, AKA problem solvers. We’re always ready to fix things (and make it aesthetically pleasing too). Another issue is chasing after a grade or the teacher’s expectations (we’re programmed to do this too). But isn’t one of the purposes of education discovery?

What I really want as a professor is to have students with unfettered curiosity, taking the time to investigate and identify as many perspectives of the problem as possible.

Perhaps, though, research being hard is a human predicament as much as it is a designers. I don’t think people, myself included, are very good at sitting in problems for a very long time. It feels much better to generate solutions, even if they’re misfires. 

That’s been my experience. In a group project, for instance, my team was researching dementia. We were learning about the topic and whether or not people in the design field are serving people with dementia in their processes. We learned that they were not because their clients and bosses hadn’t asked them to. Our immediate assumption was that businesses don’t care about dementia because they think that there’s no economic incentive (there is). We blamed capitalism and created a game of sorts that facilitates designers and business people in a hackathon for dementia.

Before I go further, it’s worth nothing that early on in our process, one of our professors told us to write about a book about the history dementia (much like this book about cancer). I remember thinking, we don’t have enough time to write a book, and that’s not our job anyway. But now, looking back, I realize that wasn’t the point. The professor didn’t literally mean for us to write a book. Instead, they wanted us to uncover as much information as possible about dementia, so much so that we could write a book. Much like Josh, the V.C. mentioned above could write a book about the topics he was making decisions about. 

If we could go back in time, I think our team would have taken heed of our professors advice and asked more questions before jumping to the hackathon solution. We would ask questions like, why aren’t businesses considering people with dementia? Or, who is considering people with dementia and what can we learn from them? We could interview experts at business schools, or entrepreneurs, and read loads of articles and books. Who knows what we would have learned? Maybe we would have written a book after all?

Eventually, we did inquire further after and met with a professor at the UC business school. When asked why businesses aren’t considering people with dementia, they hypothesized that people are uncomfortable because dementia is an emotionally heavy topic. In our culture, they said, people aren’t equipped for those types of conversations.

So, maybe capitalism isn’t to blame (entirely)?

Our team then began asking, how do we kindle emotionally heavy conversations at in the workplace and classroom? And, why doesn’t corporate culture lend itself to emotionally heavy conversations?

We started to work toward the problem at a groundwater level, where change needs to happen, vs. scratching the surface.

If you are a student, speaking as a professor myself, your instructors want to see that you are diligent in your research (and design). If they’re a good professor, they won’t determine or push you toward results other than what your process reveals. Two plus two doesn’t always equal four. Answers are often unpredictable. The process can be messy. Look to your professor for encouragement and ask them to suggest the best tools for the job at hand. Pull as much out of them as possible to help you do your job.

I’ll conclude with a metaphor that I think we can all relate to. Try to recall a time that you shared something difficult with a friend and they gave you quick advice. It doesn’t feel so good, does it? You’d prefer that they listen and be a presence more than anything else. As design researchers, it’s our job, similarly, to hold the advice and simply listen and be present to the next immediate step. In which case, it’s probably time that more of us read Brené Brown and Vivianne Castillo because they can teach us how to sit with difficult situations and move purposefully towards a healthy conclusions.