An Extension Of Grassroots Theoretical Strategies And Design Research Methods

So far,Design is still a relatively young discipline,and therefore,is the mission and responsibility of design researchers in this new era to explore the strategies of design research and to build a system and path for discipline research in the future.Design research is featured with an interdisciplinary nature.Given the concept of interdiscipline,its “inter-sexuality" can be seen in its relationships with many other disciplines,such as natural science,social science,and humanities,etc.Grounded Theory is a classic strategy advocated by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss working in the social science research.This strategy is not a substantive theory,but a research path(Lead)or a methodology.Grounded Theory can be regarded as one of many paths in qualitative research,but its most obvious difference from other paths is that the its research purpose is to continuously generate new theories from empirical data and apply the new theories to discipline practice.It is not only to describe and explain the research phenomenon itself,or to conduct a single-layer linear analysis on the narrative perspective,speech characteristics or daily life history of the people studied.An old saying goes that the stones of those hills may be used to polish gems.The advocation of the historical view and disciplinary perspective in design research is helpful to discover the classic Grounded Theory and to try new experimental crossovers and graft.This is undoubtedly valuable for the design research of School of Design in the future.For its part of this methodology,the process is to constantly make innovations from bottom to top from the original historical data.Based on the important elements,characteristics and research procedures of Grounded Theory,this paper is aimed to cross-construct a feasible design research method,that is,from embryonic stage of field discovery featured with thick description,comparison and sorting of original data,to problem condensation featured with coding and decoding of field data,and to deep analysis in the incubation period of memo and sampling of substantive theories,hoping to reach the mature period of the evolution and generation of formal theories.Finally,from the initial practical interest in research objects,to the natural presentation of the substantive theory,and then to the evolution of the formal theory in the experimental field of design research,the theory formed by drawing on Grounded Theory is different from some general conclusions that are formed without contexts.It emphasizes the process of formation,orientation of design operations,as well as the rationality and prospective in its guide in redesign.The essence of design transformation is the transformation of design concepts.The opportunities are hidden in greatly diverse and splendid cultures in the current social development.The research on design thinking and strategies is an effective method for us to continuously explore and tap these opportunities.In such a journey of exploration,it is hoped to provide a possible method reference for design research in the future by means of observing and re-focusing to condense new problems and new ideas related to design.