Research is not found; it is made.

The findings
produced through the use of specific tools
and questions (e.g. the census, the scale,
the Google Search) are not an inherent truth
about the research focus; they are produced
as part of broader political and cultural
systems of knowledge and authority, and they
may be fallible in their ethics, accuracy, and
assumptions of causation and correlation.
As a mode of collecting findings, research
is predicated on systematic approaches,
clear organisations, and consistent yet
flexible archiving strategies. Even the most
open-ended research requires some kind of
framework, editing, or curation in order to be
legible to other people.
Citations and referencing are ways of
positioning research within a lineage or
network of other sources, a collective body
of information and ideas. Plagiarism—
the reproduction of referenced material
(verbatim or in essence) presented as original
work without citation—is most often the
result of poor organisation of the research
process or ignorance rather than malicious
intent. Honesty and ethical participation
in a research community are fundamental
characteristics of any research process.
In Frayling’s "Research in Art and Design",
he describes research "into art and design"
(historical, perceptual, and theoretical
analyses), "through art and design"
(materials research, experimentation, and
documentation of process), and "for art
and design" (the gathering of references
becomes embodied knowledge in the form of
an artefact). Each relation implies different
methods and responsibilities between a
notional researcher and a notional designer
(sometimes the same person).
Almost all design research practices
are characterised by some degree of
interdisciplinarity, whether that discipline
is philosophy, psychology, anthropology,
economics, theatre, activism, material culture,
or something else entirely. These disciplines
can offer many new methods or concepts to
the design researcher, but it is important to
understand the context from which those
methods or concepts are being adapted.
It is advisable to study the current discourse
on the ideologies and politics of that field
(from within or from outside), to collaborate
directly with practitioners in that field, and
to consider ways of introducing research
outcomes back into that field (which may
require translation or materialisation in
different ways in order to be legible outside
the design field).
Original research can happen in a variety
of forms: one may attempt to rigorously
document or produce data about a previously
unrecognised phenomenon, but one may
also explore other forms of embodied or
open-ended research that emerge from the
subjectivity of the author. These experimental
approaches also demand new methods of
showing and analysing their results, as well as
publishing them or making them public.
The sense of neutrality idealised in scientific
research may be neither possible nor
desirable in design research, but the personal
position of the subjective researcher must
be precisely and consciously defined. A
critical engagement with established
forms of primary and secondary research
demonstrates not only self-awareness but
also consideration of how the research
outcome will be made public and situated in a
particular context.
For example, in a literature review based on
scholars or experts in a given field, who is
included in the canon and how is their work
interpreted? Does it privilege certain forms
of knowledge over others (e.g. academic,
quantitative, institutional, and authored
versus informal, qualitative, social, and
anonymous)? In speculative research based
on theory, to whom is it relevant and how does
it open itself up to that audience to debate?
In data analysis, is the data itself analysed
in terms of bias, sources of power, and the
personal agency and privacy of the research
subject? In field research or ethnographic
research, is the researcher aware of their
ingrained systems of judgment, bias, and
belonging when interpreting phenomena,
objects, places, or people that are familiar or
unfamiliar to them? How does their presence
affect the research and how should that
presence be documented in the research
outcomes?