DEXTERITY IN RESEARCH AND WRITING: INTERPRETING DESIGN STUDIO AS A RESEARCH SPACE

Designers are often blamed for producing socially irresponsible products. Their inability to formulate a decision-making process that involves end-users was observed as a reason. Design studio teaching urges students to fine-tune a thinking process but students are not convinced if their thinking is duly weighed in grading or recognized by prospective employers. They incline to follow popular trends or their studio tutors rather than fine-tuning a rational thinking process that will generate a unique solution for the task in hand. They practice assembling solutions and excelling presentation techniques in the design studio. By devising twelve design studios where design was interpreted as research to inculcate design thinking, we exposed students to research methods that can integrate end-users in their design solutions. They showed signs of acquiring knowledge in investigation and analysis of in-depth data required for creating end-user empathetic design solutions. After learning academic writing, students started becoming less descriptive, less precedent-dependent, or less tutor-dependent. We found that they preferred qualitative research methods over quantitative methods in developing a design process. Keywords: Design studio pedagogy, end user, knowledge construction, qualitative research methods