Four cultures of analysis in design research

Abstract

Fresh interest in design research came from several corners in the 1980s and the 1990s. This chapter looks at analysis, a crucially important step in any research, but also a step that has not received as much attention in literature as it merits. It describes analytic cultures instead of what the individual studies, and described four main cultures: statistical, inductive, explication-based, and art and design-based. The chapter shows, several cultures co-exist in contemporary design research. It purposes a challenge: how to bring the diversity into curriculum dominated by loans from the sciences and the social sciences. Most researchers in art schools and traditional design occupations avoid statistical methods, as do most researchers in Europe and North America. As new research communities have developed, they have usually learned their research practices and worldviews from disciplines with longer historical roots.