Collins, Hilary. "The practitioners: Rachel Cooper on credibility in creative research.

" Creative Research: The Theory and

Practice of Research for the Creative Industries. London: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018. 17–20. Bloomsbury Visual Arts. Web.
9 Mar. 2024. <http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474247115.0010>.

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 THE PRACTITIONERS: RACHEL
COOPER ON CREDIBILITY
IN CREATIVE RESEARCH
This section aims to illustrate the value of academic
research both as a resource for your research project and
as a tool for the creative industries to apply to practical
strategic and operational management. This section
uses a published statement in www.designcouncil.org
from Rachel Cooper, who is distinguished professor of
design management and policy at Lancaster University.
Her research interests cover design management,
design policy, new product development, design in the
built environment, design against crime and socially
responsible design. She was also founding editor of The
Design Journal and founding president of the European
Academy of Design.
RACHEL COOPER ON THE
DESIGN JOURNAL
I wrote the first editorial of The Design Journal,
published by Gower, ‘Design Research Comes of Age’,
in which I said that design research had, to date, existed
in niches, and had been disseminated under various
guises such as engineering, CAD, management, and art
and design; indeed the very nature of design research
had been debated. Since that first issue of the journal
we have, with Gower and then its partner company
Ashgate, continued to publish a broad spread of double
blind refereed papers from a range of international
authors representing a vast array of design disciplines.
Originally, many colleagues were concerned that the
coverage was too broad, and that in design one needed
to focus. However, the longevity of the journal is
evidence to the fact that, while other journals came and
went, the philosophy of the original editors has paid off
Creative Research.indb 17
and been part of a vanguard driving design research
across and beyond its narrow disciplinary confines.
RACHEL COOPER ON THE
ROLE OF ACADEMIC DESIGN
RESEARCH
Academic design research is research conducted primarily
by higher education institutions into a variety of topics
and issues concerned with design. Its emergence, since
the 1960s, followed the recognition of the increasing
complexity of design problems and the need to develop
tools and methods. Design research grew significantly
from the early 1990s as UK government research funding
provided new opportunities to researchers.
Introduction to academic
design research
The overall aim of design research is to develop an
accessible, robust body of knowledge that enhances
our understanding of design processes, applications,
methods and contexts. Often, this knowledge helps to
define best practice and workable methods in dealing
with design and design-related problems. It therefore
has considerable potential for improving our use and
management of design.
Design research embraces a wide range of disciplines,
research inquiries and methodologies. These include
the following:
●● Theoretical studies in design which aim to develop
a science of design and provide conceptual
frameworks for design inquiries.
17
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 ●● Design discipline-specific research such as
industrial design, fashion and textiles and
interactive design, which may have a specific
technical or product focus, and can include
materials and process research.
●● Research into usability, applied ergonomics,
ethnography and other studies which aim to develop
methods to bring design closer to user needs.
●● Cultural and historical research which aims to
better understand the role that design plays in our
culture, and how individuals and communities
interact with visual culture.
●● Design pedagogy research which explores issues of
learning and cognition.
●● Applied research into design problem areas, such
as crime prevention, sustainability, demographic
change and healthcare, which aims to develop
new methods for dealing with contemporary
problems.
●● Design management research which examines
how design can be managed in the context of new
product development, branding, environmental
design and economic competitiveness.
Design research is cross-disciplinary, and often inter-
disciplinary. Design departments are responsible for
much design research. However, since the 1980s there
has been growing interest in design from the social
­sciences, psychology, marketing and other manage-
ment areas. This has led to a rich culture of design
research.
Academic research is ‘open source’. Central to
the academic approach is that research problems,
methods and findings are made fully transparent
and accessible. This enables research to be built upon
and applied by others. While some contract and
consultancy research is often restricted in terms of its
dissemination, the bulk of design research is published
using a range of methods and media. These include
research conferences organized by “learned societies”
or research networks (e.g. The European Academy
of Design) usually themed on a specific topic. These
combine presentations of work in progress and fully
completed research and provide a forum for discussion.
Published proceedings of full papers and abstracts
represent an important resource for design researchers
and users of design research, and provide a means of
18 
CONTEXT
Creative Research.indb 18
developing an international community of researchers
in the following specific disciplines:
●● Refereed journals, which publish research papers
that have been peer reviewed by specialists. Some
are cross-disciplinary (e.g. The Design Journal)
while others are more specialized (e.g. Design
Management Journal). Journals represent a rigorous
source of research methods and findings.
●● Books, which provide detailed arguments and
findings; they can lack the immediacy of conference
and journal papers, but provide in-depth coverage
of research.
To summarize, design research needs to be
●● Credible
To be credible the results of qualitative research need
to be believable from the perspective of the participant
in the research. From this perspective, the purpose
of qualitative research is to describe or understand
the phenomena of interest from the participant’s
perspective; it is the participants who need to
legitimately judge the credibility of the results.
●● Transferable
Transferability refers to the degree to which the results
of qualitative research can be generalized or transferred
to other contexts or settings. The qualitative researcher
can enhance transferability by doing a thorough job of
describing the research context and the assumptions
that were central to the research.
●● Dependable
The traditional quantitative view of reliability is based
on whether the results can be repeated or replicated. The
idea of dependability, on the other hand, emphasizes
the need for the researcher to account for the ever-
changing context within which research occurs. As
the researcher, you are responsible for describing the
changes that occur in the setting and how these changes
affected the way the researcher approached the study.
●● Confirmable
Qualitative research tends to assume that each
researcher brings a unique perspective to the study.
Confirmability refers to the degree to which the results
14-06-2018 11:03:32
 could be confirmed or corroborated by others. There
are a number of ways we can enhancing confirmability.
The researcher can document the procedures for
checking and rechecking the data throughout the
study. Another researcher can take a ‘devil’s advocate’
role with respect to the results, and this process can be
documented. The researcher can actively search for and
describe any negative instances that contradict prior
observations. And, after the study, you can conduct
a data audit that examines the data collection and
analysis procedures and makes judgements about the
potential for bias or distortion.

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