Developing Critical Documentation Practices For Design Researchers

Developing critical documentation practices
for design researchers

Zo€e Sadokierski, Faculty of Design, Architecture, and Building, University of
Technology Sydney, Australia
This article presents guidelines for developing a critical documentation practice;

a generative approach to documenting design research which emphasises
drawing out the interplay between design practice and literature/precedents, to
build a ‘credible evidence base’ for scholarly reporting. The guidelines are
targeted at design researchers e particularly students and designers new to
scholarship e conducting design practice as a mode of inquiry. The guidelines
facilitate capturing and critiquing four categories of research activity: creating
progressive overview maps, analysis of contextual anchors (key literature and
practice precedents), reflective experiment logs (of iterative design processes)
and peer critique. The guidelines are contextualised within design literature and
pedagogy. A case study demonstrates how insights from a critical
documentation practice drive both design and research agendas of a project.
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: reflective practice, design methods, design education, design critique,

documentation
I
n order to frame design practice as a scholarly activity, researchers must
demonstrate how original and transferable knowledge has emerged
through design processes. Yet documenting processes such as iterative
experimentation, decision-making driven by tacit knowledge, and insights
drawn from self-reflection and peer critique is difficult and, as discussed
below, few models exist for systematically and rigorously documenting these
activities for scholarly reporting.
Therefore, this article presents a set of guidelines for developing a critical

documentation practice: a systematic and generative approach to capturing
and critiquing design research conducted in a scholarly context. The guidelines
are intended for design researchers, particularly designers new to scholarship
and research students and their supervisors, conducting design practice as a
mode of inquiry. The guidelines facilitate documenting four categories of
research through design (RtD)1 activity: creating progressive overview maps
Corresponding author:
Zo€e Sadokierski (ongoing articulation of the research agenda), analysis of contextual anchors
zoe.sadokierski@uts. (key literature and practice precedents), keeping reflective experiment logs
edu.au (documentation of iterative design processes) and peer critique of both design
www.elsevier.com/locate/destud
0142-694X Design Studies xxx (xxxx) xxx
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2020.03.002 1
Ó 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please cite this article as: Sadokierski, Z., Developing critical documentation practices for design researchers, Design
Studies, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.destud.2020.03.002
artefacts and research insights (formal critique and anecdotal feedback). The
guidelines include considerations on how to document RtD activities
(analogue and digital tools and techniques), and reflective prompts to help
draw out the interplay between design practice and design literature/prece-
dents, in order to build a ‘credible evidence base’ (Pedgley, 2007) for reporting
knowledge production that results from design practice.
A systematic documentation practice may seem like common sense to estab-

lished design researchers, but there are many scenarios e teaching under-
and postgraduate students, as well as reporting on my own research projects
e in which I have searched in vain for guidelines that emphasise documenting
design practice as scholarly inquiry. It is important to acknowledge that de-
signers almost always conduct research as part of their practice, but this
research is generally only shared with members of a project team, not broadly
disseminated as a contribution to disciplinary knowledge.
This distinction is often described as the difference between ‘research’ and

‘Research’. Christopher Frayling (1993) categorises research with a ‘small r’
as research for design, in contrast to Research about or through design. Extend-
ing Frayling’s distinctions, Interaction Design researchers distinguish between
‘first order knowledge’, pertaining to specific projects and own-knowledge
(research for design), and ‘second order knowledge’ e how insights and under-
standings revealed through the design process can be articulated as generalised
knowledge (the aim of research about and through design) (Bardzell, Bardzell,
Dalsgaard, Gross, & Halskov, 2016; H€ oo€k et al., 2015; L€
owgren, 2013). Simi-
larly, practitionereresearcher Anne Burdick (2003, p. 82) recognises that while
all designers engage in creative exploration, a ‘design (as) research’ practice in-
volves creating work that is “intended to address both a particular design brief
and a larger set of questions at the same time.” Burdick emphasises the impor-
tance of critical reflection within design research practice: “Designers must be
able to articulate their questions and conclusions.” (Burdick, 2003) In this
article, a distinction is made between research activities with a ‘design agenda’
(project specific research for design, conducted to extend a designer’s own knowl-
edge) and a ‘Research agenda’ (research through design, conducted with the
intention to produce original and transferable knowledge).
The guidelines for critical documentation reported here were developed over
more than fifteen-years as a designer, researcher and educator, drawing
from existing approaches to journaling and documentation in design educa-
tion and literature. The first section of the article contextualises the guidelines
within educational and scholarly approaches to documenting design research,
particularly a framework for planning and evaluating RtD documentation
proposed by Bardzell et al. (2016). The second section presents the guidelines.
The third section demonstrates how the guidelines were used in the project
2 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx
‘Endgame: Part 1’. It concludes by evaluating the guidelines based on Bardzell
et al.’s framework.
1 Documentation in design education and RtD literature

1.1 Documentation in design education
It is worth considering how process documentation, particularly journaling, is
taught in design education, as this is where most practitionereresearchers will
have first learnt to document and share creative processes. Process journals e
also referred to as diaries, workbooks, log books, sketchbooks, development
folios and notebooks e are used to document the various stages of a design
project. Documenting inspiration (design precedents), ideation (concept devel-
opment) and iterative processes (such as design drafts, prototype and UX
testing, experimentation with media and materials) as a project unfolds allows
students to: share iterative development with peers; collaborators or teaching
staff to facilitate critique; self-critique in order to progress toward a final
outcome, and; provide evidence of original ideas or designs (intellectual
property).
Process journals may be shared either in their ‘raw’ state during studio
critique, or as an edited document submitted for assessment. For example,
in the Visual Communication Design program where I lecture, students submit
an edited and critically annotated process document alongside every assessable
project. Students are instructed to include only what ‘tells the story’ of the
design process; insightful moments, not every mark made or thought had.
All examples and images must be annotated to explain how included drafts/it-
erations or design precedents informed students’ concept development and/or
making. Compiling such a document requires an additional round of critical
reflection to decide which process work is significant and how to organise
the content so it clearly communicates an iterative, reflective process.
Done well, these ‘synthesis documents’ provide an evidence base by which to

evaluate research, conceptual development and novel processes which may not
be evident in the final work itself, allowing staff to assess innovative thinking
and processes as well as the final design artefact (Smith, Hedley, & Molloy,
2009). This is worth considering in the context of design scholarship, where
processes/methods and critical thinking are often reported as the research
outcome; design experiments are used to better understand or frame problems
rather than produce solutions to them and, therefore, the processes must be
sharable as well as final artefacts (Dalsgaard, Halskov, & Nielsen, 2009;
Lambert & Speed, 2017).
When design students transition to professional work, many continue docu-

menting design processes, as seen in the wealth of books and trade
Critical documentation practices for design researchers 3
publications showcasing sketchbooks of well-known designers, though many
of these are more intimidatingly beautiful Pinterest-fodder than instructive
peeks into a replicable process. Many textbooks, such as Giorgia Lupi and Ste-
fanie Posavec’s Observe, Collect, Draw!: A Visual Journal (Lupi and Posavec,
2018), Keri Smith’s How to Be an Explorer of the World (Smith, 2008) and
Lynda Barry’s Syllabus (2014), provide creative exercises and strategies for
keeping process journals to manage own practice. However, beyond these
showcase and instructional books, process documentation tends to be a pri-
vate practice which professional designers use to self-manage; although pro-
cess work may be shared within a design studio for critique or with clients
during pitch sessions, I have never heard of clients or employers requesting
a process journal to reward innovative thinking not evident in final design ar-
tefacts. Furthermore, as designers develop expertise and what Donald Sch€ on
(1984, p. 24) calls ‘repertoire’ e the mental archive of design examples, ideas,
anecdotes and images that a design professional collects through their training
and experience in practice which informs a designer’s ‘knowing-in-action’ e
there may be less need for annotating ideation and experimentation as learning
becomes more instinctive and intuitive. Moreover, process work is the intellec-
tual property of the designer and unrealised ideas in one project may be used in
future projects; sharing this work is not good business practice.
Graduate students and established designers transitioning to academia may

arrive with documentation habits which are effective for developing own prac-
tice (design agenda), but these habits need to be reframed for scholarly
research (Research agenda). To demonstrate originality, innovation and
rigour in a scholarly context, the tacit knowledge and material engagement
driving design thinking and making needs to be evidenced and articulated in
a broadly sharable way. Where process journaling in design education or pro-
fessions is used to develop ‘own practice’, the primary goal of critical docu-
mentation for scholarly research is to capture and make connections
between the thinking and processes that are consciously, or could later be evi-
denced as, ‘research data’. In other words, the emphasis is on the criticality and
rigour of the process as a scholarly research method.
1.2 Documentation as a scholarly design research method

Owain Pedgley argues that in order to be distinguished from design practice,
design research requires “systematic and effective methods for capturing and
analysing own design activity, so that the resultant data may be used as cred-
ible evidence base for practice-led research in design.”2 (Pedgley, 2007, p. 480)
Pedgley recognises that the “autobiographical nature of practice-led research
involving self-accounting and self-analysis coupled to inherently personal
design processes, demands that special attention is paid to achieving method-
ological transparency.” (Pedgley, 2007, p. 480) Using his doctoral research as a
case study, supplemented by interviews with other industrial design
researchers, Pedgley provides a detailed account of developing a diary practice
to document design activity which includes both ‘cerebral’ and ‘externally
perceptible’ activities. He considers whether to write entries concurrently or
retrospectively (p. 472) and suggests keeping events in chronological order,
ensuring entries are “intelligible, insightful and honest” (p. 473), and provides
a set of ‘pro forma’ sheets for recording end-of-the-day diary writing and cod-
ing (analysis) suggestions. Pedgely reflects that “later diary entries were gener-
ally more detailed DNA revealing than earlier ones” (p. 480) which points to
the fact that documentation practices develop over time, as the researcher gets
a ‘feel’ for the activities involved. This important idea is reiterated at the end of
this article.
Pedgley’s pragmatic approach is primarily concerned with revealing ‘black

box’ aspects of designing; processes which occur in the relative privacy of stu-
dio practice and are not visible in a final artefact. Systematically and objec-
tively capturing such activity provides opportunities to discuss iterations,
processes or ideas that were entertained but not implemented, what Pedgley
calls ‘design activity reportage’. In this sense, Pedgley’s approach is similar
to data collection in the natural sciences, where researchers strive to objec-
tively record experiments or phenomena, so the data set is ‘untainted’ by the
bias or interpretation of the researcher. Published or otherwise shared within
a field, such documentation contributes a data set for interpreting or valuing
design artefacts in the pursuit of knowledge production.
However, although widely adopted, Pedgley’s approach does not explicitly

prompt drawing connections between design activity and the context in which
it occurs e documenting the ways contextual research or theory may inform,
or be informed by, an iterative design practice.3 It also does not prompt re-
searchers to contextualise current practice within a ‘traceable genealogy’ of
own practice (Brandt & Binder, 2007) or contextualise the practice with prece-
dents from the field. Nor does it recognise the potential value of capturing
‘embodied cognition’ that expert designers bring to practice (Groth,
M€ akel€
a, & Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, 2015; M€ akel€
a & Nimkulrat, 2018), which
can lead to new lines of inquiry for both practice and research agendas; an
example comes from Nimkulrat’s doctoral research where documentation of
her process leads her to connect the tactile and emotive experience of handling
material (paper threads) across two design experiments, which in turn leads to
a theoretical inquiry (M€ akel€
a & Nimkulrat, 2018, p. 11).
Therefore, the proposed guidelines extend Pedgley’s model by emphasising

contextualisation of a RtD project within Design literature and design arte-
fact/process precedents, as well as within a researcher’s own genealogy of
RtD practice, and encouraging documentation of embodied experience.
Recognising that systematic documentation of RtD processes is “essential for
capturing and translating design knowledge into broader academic knowl-
edge” but that such documentation has “received little sustained attention,”
a collective of design researchers from the universities of Indiana (USA) and
Aarhus (Denmark) conducted a Design literature review of approaches to
RtD documentation (Bardzell et al., 2016, p. 96). They concluded that existing
models “variously shed light on different aspects of the problem [of document-
ing design research], but each is also incomplete. Each struggles to support
design and research equally, and each struggles to balance pushing design for-
ward in the moment with supporting reflection and synthetic thinking.”
(Bardzell et al., 2016, p.97) In other words, despite the recognised value of doc-
umenting RtD processes, there is no comprehensive model for doing so.
In addition to their literature review the research teams conducted a collabo-

rative inquiry into each other’s practices, to draw out problems with and pos-
sibilities for documenting RtD practice. As a result, Bardzell et al. point to
three ‘key concerns’ when evaluating RtD documentation.
First, the medium of RtD documentation. Design documentation generally in-

volves different kinds of documents (images, text, audioevisual) which are
captured and stored in notebooks or software, in order to be “aggregated, dis-
aggregated, and reaggregated for different purposes (e.g. to support design
ideation, to pitch a direction to a client, to trace the emerging rationale of a
project).” (p. 98). Documentation becomes coherent based on how well the
‘research data’ is captured in the first place, but also in how documents have
been aggregated (edited and composed) into a particular sharable document
(such as a report or dissertation) based on substantive and rhetorical purposes
of that document. A key problem with the medium of documentation is pre-
cisely what and how much to capture; amassing large quantities of data re-
quires time and often technical skills to interpret.4 This is further
complicated in collaborative research where multiple team members are
responsible for documentation, especially when the collaboration involves
people not engaged in the research agenda. (p. 103).
Second, the performativity of the documentation, or, ‘documents as speech

acts’. (p. 99) During the study, the authors shifted from asking what design
documentation is to what documentation does: “Documentation is not merely
serving in an instrumental capacity to report on facts and findings; it is also
generative in that it ‘talks back’ to us as designers and researchers.” (p. 106)
Rather than ‘performative’, the term ‘generative’ is used within this article,
because it aligns Bardzell et al.’s idea with Sch€
on’s framing of design practice
as a dialogue between designer and materials (Sch€ on, 1983, p. 135) and Tim
Ingold’s ‘morphogenetic making’ (Ingold, 2013) in which he considers making
as a contingent process of growth. Performed critically, the act of documenting
transcends passive description of what happened, to become itself a design
activity. This kind of reflective and critical documentation allows ideas to sur-
face e and be recorded e at unexpected moments in the design process.
Lambert and Speed (2017, p. 104) describe the way that “ideas tend to emerge
and develop on the move” in creative research, and propose that “design re-
searchers have the means to reposition their projects to frame premeditated
research questions and objectives within their work and in some cases to apply
research questions after practice has taken place.” Yet in order for such
research framing to not appear as ‘post rationalisation’ of practice, rigorous
documentation is required to show the evolution of thinking through making,
and where critical documentation has in fact become a design act that gener-
ates insights about artefacts, processes or theories.
A type of generative documentation that is not addressed in Bardzell et al. is

that of capturing peer critique as part of design and research processes. In the
two case studies cited, documenting meeting notes and conversations is
mentioned but little detail on precisely what was captured or how this data
was later analysed or reflected upon. In the case of Peter Dalsgaard and
Kim Halskov’s Process Reflection Tool (PRT), photographs of whiteboards
from meetings supplemented with bullet-list and diagrammatic summaries
captured conversations from some key meetings, but it was noted that in gen-
eral few reflections were entered by the research team, meaning the “rich dis-
cussions and reflections in the design research team throughout the project”
were not captured (Bardzell et al., 2016, p. 102).
Worth flagging is that Dalsgaard and Halskov’s PRT was initially structured
around chronologically documenting ‘events’ (distinct activities in a design
process such as meetings, workshops or experiments) and ‘sub-events’ (such
as a complex individual item on a meeting agenda or single design experiment,
referred to as ‘iterations’ in the guidelines below), but after testing it, they
added a ‘notes’ section, recognising the value of capturing ‘informal’ parts
of the process such as emails, phone calls and coffee-machine conversations
(Dalsgaard & Halskov, 2012, p. 431). In commercial practice, informal feed-
back in studios or with design peers e as distinct from formal client feedback
or user testing e frequently progresses a design solution by bringing a fresh,
expert perspective to a design problem or process, but is rarely documented.
In a research context, by proactively capturing peer critique e whether in
formal meetings/presentations, or informal conversations with peers and col-
laborators e we become actors within critical scenario, synthesising and
asking for clarification. Explaining how peer critique has informed design
thinking and making can help transcend the ‘autobiographical’ nature of
design research that Pedgley, and others, flag as a potential problem for re-
porting practice as research, and is addressed further in the guidelines below.
Bardzell et al.’s third concern is of providing equal support for design and
research activities, when “the particularity of design seems to be in conflict
with the generalising impulses of research.” (p. 99) Dalsgaard and Halskov
describe ‘multiple levels of wickedness’ faced by RtD practitioners: “they
face not only the wicked problems in the practice of doing interaction design,
but also the wicked problems that exist in the practice of doing research” and
the challenge of finding “the proper balance between acting as designers and
acting as researchers.” (Dalsgaard and Halskov, 2012, p. 428) To extend the
idea of entanglement, Bardzell et al. cite Basballe and Halskov (2012)’s notion
that in RtD, design and research are continuously and dynamically coupling,
interweaving and decoupling. Knowing how and what to untangle in order to
‘report research’ is indeed a wicked problem.
Bill Gaver and John Bowers (2012, p. 42) express concern that adhering to
scholarly conventions e making their research contributions “look a bit
more like commonly understood versions of research” e something is lost
from design practice: “is the result still design, or have we lost something in
the process?” However, if the research narrative is only comprehensible to a
small community of experts, it shackles the potential impact and contribution
of the work. Using at least some familiar conventions while reporting RtD
projects in a scholarly context e such as clearly pointing to research questions,
methods/processes and precedents e demonstrates the research agenda to
broader audiences, including design researchers who are not themselves prac-
titioners, and researchers from other fields. The aim of critical documentation
is not to make design practice ‘look’ more like research, but to convincingly
show how original and transferable knowledge has emerged through practice.
If design researchers are to work collaboratively we must find ways to explain
RtD processes and artefacts, so other researchers and industry partners value
our contributions. Figuring out how to document both design and research ac-
tivities without ‘decoupling’ them has been a key concern in developing the
following critical documentation guidelines.
After proposing the guidelines and demonstrating their use in a RtD project,
Bardzell et al.’s three concerns for RtD documentation are reintroduced, to
demonstrate how the guidelines contribute to Design scholarship.
2 Guidelines for developing a critical documentation

practice
The guidelines below are organised by four research activities e creating Pro-
gressive Overview Maps, analysis of Contextual Anchors, keeping Reflective
Experiment Logs, documenting Peer Critique e with suggestions on how to
capture the ‘research data’ that emerges from these actvities, and prompts
for reflection that focus on drawing out connections between design and
research agendas. Documenting these four activities can generate data
required for scholarly reporting: an evolving research agenda, contextual
review of literature/precedents, design activity as a mode of inquiry and evi-
dence of peer review.
Each type of documentation is described using the frame what (an expanded
definition of the activity), why (the potential value of this type of documenta-
tion) and how (detailed suggestions for how to conduct the documentation).
2.1 Progressive overview maps

What: Regular, succinct summaries of the research foci, aims and compelling
questions driving the practice; like a screenshot of current thinking/making.
Why: Regularly pulling back to ‘map the big picture’ e design and research
agendas e of a project as it is understood at a particular moment serves three
purposes. First, it helps maintain perspective ‘in action’; research unfolds
messily, while focussing on one aspect of a project it can become difficult to
see the forest for the trees. Second, progressive overview maps capture the evo-
lution of a project for future reflection. Reflecting on overview maps may
reveal when major shifts in the focus or framing of the research occur. For
example, when a reading or design experiment leads to a noteworthy shift in
thinking or a substantial change in the ‘design horizon’ (Dalsgaard et al.,
2009; L€ owgren & Stolterman, 2004). Third, these overview maps are useful
tools to communicate scholarly context for a specific project, or part of a proj-
ect, in presentations, pitches or critique sessions.
How: These maps can be short written statements, or diagrammatic sketches.

Starting a project, plan how to create and archive overview maps. Maps may
be sketched on paper or created as digital files, but each map must be clearly
dated and chronologically archived in a folder, file or notebook. Schedule a
regular time to map that makes sense for the particular project: daily, weekly,
monthly.
To start, respond to these prompts adapted from questions posed in Boothe

et al. (2003):
I am exploring: [A specific topic, question, phenomenon, process]
by doing: [Processes and methods]
so that / in order to: [What will people experience/learn/do? What is the rele-
vance of this project; how does it relate to a problem or phenomenon in design
practice, design theory or the world?]
If, at various stages of a project, it is not possible to clearly answer these ques-
tions, reflect on why.
Then, note key ‘anchors’ (literature and design precedents, see 2.2 below) that
inform current thinking or experiments, including specific ideas or provoca-
tions being interrogated or demonstrated through the design practice, and
one’s own previous projects or experiments. In developing a critical documen-
tation practice, researchers may come up with original prompts, questions or
approaches to capturing the ‘big picture’ for their unique practice.
2.2 Analysis of contextual anchors

What: Succinct analysis of key literature (scholarly and/or other texts) and
design precedents (projects, processes or artefacts) that have significantly
anchored or influenced thinking and/or design processes. This includes pro-
jects from the researcher’s own ‘genealogy’.
Why: Tracking when, within a research project, a text/theory/artefact/project

inspires a design process (design agenda), or when a design process leads to a
new understanding of a design artefact or theory (Research agenda), can later
evidence how practice has functioned as a mode of inquiry. This differs to
keeping a library of references in software such as Mendeley or Endnote,
because documenting precisely when the texts/precedents were considered in
the arc of a research project can be important. A collection of texts/precedents
written up in this format can be collated as an Annotated Bibliography or
Contextual Review in some genres of scholarly publishing; thorough initial
documentation saves time later.
In addition to the tacit knowledge which develops through design practice, this
practice of contextual analysis, particularly analysing design precedents, de-
velops what Sch€ on calls the researcher’s ‘repertoire’.
How:
a) Citation details.
b) Analysis of citation/metadata. [Noteworthy details about the author/de-
signer’s title/institutional affiliations or the publication source/exhibition
venue which may be relevant to mention in publications or presentations.]
c) Short summary of text/precedent. [What argument/s is the author/
designer making? What is the aim of the project/artefact or how does it
work?]
d) Interpretation/analysis of the text/precedent. [Why is this text/precedent
relevant to this research, what was learnt from it and, most importantly,
did it lead to new questions or design experiments?]
2.3 Reflective experiment5 logs

What: For each ‘iteration’ within a project, keep a Reflective Experiment Log
using the prompts below. An iteration is any discrete activity conducted with a
specific goal or question in mind, such as: prototyping, conducting material ex-
periments or user testing scenarios. Clearly date experiments and archive
chronologically.
Why: To record aims, processes/methods and critical reflections on and for

design practice that may be later used as an evidence base for scholarly report-
ing. Reflecting on and for practice may generate design insights (how to
improve design processes or outcomes) as well as research insights (design
practice may lead to new understanding of or connections between key litera-
ture, design precedents or previous own practice that can form arguments or
theorisation).
How: Schedule time for documentation; plan how, what and when to capture
processes and reflections, in a way that is logical and achievable. Analogue
documentation (handwritten notes, sketches) is quick and requires only pen
and paper, however as documentation amasses, it is difficult to search and
retrieve notes. Digital documentation requires equipment (hard and software
to capture and store research data and ideas) which can interrupt the ‘flow’ of
a design process, however using software such as Evernote or Trello allows
embedding images, audioevisual and web clippings and makes this content
searchable and able to be aggregated in many different ways. It is possible
to combine modes for capturing and archiving this activity, although be aware
that testing new digital tools (off-the-shelf apps or custom-made tools) can be
time consuming and deficiencies in tools may only become obvious halfway
through a project.
Following are prompts for what to document, and when.
Before:
a) Aims:
What does the experiment aim to find out or test? Why?
b) Precedents/Context:
Who has performed similar research and/or practice, or what inspired this
experiment (including the researcher’s previous work)? What has been bor-
rowed from the thinking, processes or methods, and how does this experiment
differ from their outcome or methods?
During:
c) Process/Methods:
In point form, describe the method/s and processes used, include images,
video or diagrams where relevant. Clearly note where processes/methods
are borrowed or original. It is essential to plan what, how and when to
best capture a process before starting each experiment. What ‘data’ is to be
collected e processes/actions, output/artefacts, peer/collaborator/user re-
sponses, or a combination of these? How will the data be captured: photo-
graph, voice/video record, screen-grab, write or sketch notes. When will the
data be captured e concurrently (while working) or retrospectively (an allo-
cated time at the end of each work session)?
After:
d) Reflection on Action:
Review the processes and methods. In point form, reflect:
Was what happened expected; why/why not?
Did the methods/processes shift while working; how and why?
Record emotional responses to the practice; what was frustrating, exciting,
disappointing, satisfying?
What insights were gained through this experiment; what is known now
that was not known before?
Has this experiment led to thinking differently about the precedents, previ-
ous experiments, readings or theories?
Has this experiment shifted the research focus, aims or questions?
e) Reflection for Action:
Based on the reflections on action, what might be done differently or next?
Use these reflections to start the next experiment log. How could the experi-
ment be repeated or re-designed to achieve better or different results? Should
this experiment be abandoned to start something new?
2.4 Reflecting on peer critique

What: Capturing and reflecting on peer critique such as: feedback given in stu-
dio pin-ups, conversations with expert colleagues, sessions with academic su-
pervisors, user testing or focus groups, and critique from public lectures,
workshops or conference presentations about the design research.
Why: First, receiving critique can be difficult; feedback is often missed/misin-

terpreted when the recipient feels defensive, overwhelmed, or is unable to
follow sometimes-haphazard ideas being thrown around on the spot. For
RtD practitioners, critique can be further complicated by the entanglement
of design and research agendas, which can confuse both the researcher and
critic. Capturing critique allows retrospective reflection in a more focused
and less defensive mind-frame.
Second, significant insights about both design and research agendas of a RtD
project can evolve from ‘hallway conversations’ with colleagues who are often
experts in the field, or comments made about work presented in public lec-
tures. The case study below includes examples of such moments. This
‘informal critique’ is comparable to peer-critique commercial designers receive
in studio environments, and should be a valued aspect of the practitio-
nereresearcher’s process.
Documenting critique ensures that instances in which critique leads to a signif-

icant shift in the design or research agenda can later be credited; depending on
the wishes of the critique giver this could be anonymous (one participant sug-
gested X, which led to insight/experiment Y) or attributed (Name suggested X,
which led to insight/experiment Y). Within academia citing the source of ideas
avoids plagiarism, but is also a way to acknowledge expertise of the commu-
nity of practice the work sits within and draws upon.
How: It is important to clarify what is to be critiqued e design processes and/

or artefacts, research underpinning the practice, or both, which is possible
when critique comes from a community of RtD practitioners. The critique
process may be organised in three steps:
a) Capture the critique. Audio or video recording (with permission) allows

researchers to stay focused in the critique session and retrospective
listening may reveal further insights, but this requires dedicated time to
transcribing later and may result in ‘passive viewing’ rather than engaged
analysis (McDonnell, Lloyd, & Valkenburg, 2004). Taking notes or re-
cruiting a scribe can quickly capture the essence of the feedback, and
pausing the conversation to take notes can provide opportunities for clar-
ification, but may result in missing or misunderstand feedback. If seeking
critique on a particular aspect of a design artefact or experience, prepar-
ing materials (surveys, maps or other documents) for participants to fill
out can help gather thoughtful responses.
b) Critique the critique. Read or listen to the critique, draw out what is useful
for the research and/or design agendas, remembering that the critique
giver may have their own, differing agenda. This may be done in conver-
sation with a supervisor or colleague who was present, to tease out or
clarify key ideas.
c) Create ‘action lists’ from the critique. How could issues raised, or sugges-
tions made, be responded to through practice? Map or bullet point pro-
cesses to test, readings to find, concepts to further develop; assign how
long and when to do these activities.
3 Critical documentation case study: Endgame Part 1

This section demonstrates how the guidelines are used to document an
ongoing project ‘Endgame’. The project began as a RtD experiment to get
my head around Johanna Drucker’s theory of ‘Graphesis’ (Drucker, 2014),
by designing deliberately misleading diagrams, in order to think-through
and demonstrate the interpretive bias involved in designing these pieces of vi-
sual communication. An overview of the project is followed by a description of
how ‘research data’ drawn from my critical documentation practice frames the
design practice as scholarly inquiry.
3.1 Project overview: Endgame Part 1

In Graphesis: Visual forms of knowledge production, design and humanities
scholar Johanna Drucker sets out to establish a critical frame for understand-
ing visualisation as a primary mode of knowledge production, at a time when
“graphics of all kinds have become the predominant mode of constructing and
presenting information and experience.” (Drucker, 2014, p. 6) Recognising
that information graphics originate from disciplines such as statistics and
the empirical sciences which prioritise quantitative and ‘factual’ statements,
Drucker challenges the notion that these visual forms are a priori forms of
knowledge e reductive depictions of ‘what is’:
“Most information visualizations are acts of interpretation masquerading as

presentation. In other words, they are images that act as if they are just
showing us what is, but in actuality, they are arguments made in graphical
form.” (p. 10, her emphasis)
Currently, anyone with basic computer skills can produce convincing-looking

information visualisations. As a result, information visualisations are ubiqui-
tous in the digital landscape, neatly summarising data sets and lending the
appearance of authority to news reports, websites and social media posts.
However, scholars such as Drucker warn that digital tools allow us to make
and share information visualisations “without clear understanding of their
rhetorical force or the suitability of their underlying semantic structuring prin-
ciples to the problem for which they supposedly present a solution or trans-
parent analysis.” (Drucker, 2014) In other words, we are able to quickly and
cheaply generate visualisations that have appearance of meaning, without un-
derstanding how that meaning is produced. Describing data visualisation pro-
duced “as if the information merely exists and is not selected,” designer and
critic Paula Scher (2017) warns these visualisations “border on dangerous. It
is the world’s most effective form of propaganda.”
To demonstrate how visualisations function as arguments, Drucker calls for

design and humanities scholars to experiment with qualitative approaches to
information visualisation, approaches which aim to reveal the nuance, ambi-
guity and subjectivity inherent in qualitative fields of inquiry: “not just because
these are conditions of knowledge production in our disciplines, but because
the very model of knowledge itself that gets embodied in the process has values
whose cultural authority matters very much.” (p. 190e191).
I began reading Graphesis in late 2016, as the terms ‘fake news’ and ‘alternative
facts’ were being normalised in public discourse. I noticed that many
visualisations wallpapering news and social media forums have ‘the appear-
ance of meaning’ but, on closer inspection, reveal poorly formed arguments
or a lack of comprehensible data. In particular, articles on climate change e
both advocating preventative action and denying its existence e rely on
empirical-looking diagrams to communicate authority, often without commu-
nicating much at all.
Reflecting on Drucker’s provocation for experimental visualisation and the

proliferation of ambiguous climate change diagrams, I asked:
How might I design a deliberately deceptive diagram that appears to commu-

nicate something about climate change, without communicating anything at
all? How might I design a diagram which renders visible my ‘authorship’,
in order to think-through and demonstrate the constructed nature of these vi-
sual forms?
Therefore, this project is an example of RtD as an exploratory mode of inquiry

e the design practice (creating diagrams) is performed in order to interpret and
demonstrate theory (an aspect of Drucker’s Graphesis).
3.2 Critical documentation in the RtD project Endgame:

part 1
3.2.1 Progressive overview maps
I draft overview maps in a notebook; when I have articulated the research
agenda as clearly as I can, I sketch and pin them up in my workspace. I edit
and add to these maps as my thinking shifts. As new maps replace old, I either
archive in a specific folder, or photograph and save to an Evernote project
folder.6
In Figure 1, three colours show different times of annotation, dated in the top
right corner as April 2017 (black), May 2017 (blue) and August 2018 (pencil).
Black writing on the left is a first response to the Progressive Overview Map
prompts in the guidelines (see Section 2.1) and the sketch on the right maps
the anchors in play at the time. Blue ink and pencil annotations record critical
reflections about both design and research agendas, as they evolved over the
project. For example, a note in blue (top left) extending from ‘paratexts’
“too literary for design? Discursive/dialogical tool? Who uses that term?” dem-
onstrates thinking through appropriate critical language for Design scholar-
ship, with a prompt to follow up unclear terms. The pencil notes (bottom
right) show how the initial experiment evolved into a larger project with “mul-
tiple aims, targeted at multiple audiences” which include both design and
Research agendas.
Figure 1 Progressive overview map, April 2017eAugust 2018
Figure 2 is an overview map created to sit alongside the two final diagrams in
the ‘Rooms of Interest’ exhibition at the RTD2019 conference, communi-
cating: anchors e both research/theory and design precedents/inspiration;
design experiments, and; research questions as outcomes of the RtD practice.
This more refined example shows how an overview map can be used to
communicate the research context for RtD artefact/s.
3.2.2 Contextual anchors

A hasty note from a lecture delivered by a colleague in early 2017 set my design
process in motion. With climate change diagrams on my mind, I noted that
William Playfair’s 1805 chart about distribution of wealth resembles icebergs.
I wondered how I might manipulate this chart to make it appear more like a
climate change visualisation, in response to Drucker’s provocation. Often, I
find connecting two or more texts/projects will ‘anchor’ the research agenda
and drive a project forward; here (see Figure 3), Drucker’s Graphesis (research
anchor) with Playfair’s diagram and icebergs as metaphors for climate change
(design anchors). These connections rarely happen in a neat, chronological
manner, this example demonstrates that noting when contextual anchors
Figure 2 Overview Map for ‘Endgame Part 1’ (presentation tool)
Figure 3 Contextual Anchor (design precedent). Playfair’s 1805 chart (public domain) and journal notes from a lecture in which I first connected Playfair’s chart with icebergs
come to one’s attention within a research project is important; this documen-
tation can later demonstrate the complex ‘coupling’ of practice and theory
throughout an iterative design research practice.
3.2.3 Reflective experiment logs

Diagram 1: Possible Cost of Complacency.
Manipulating Playfair’s diagram, I added graphical forms which more closely
resemble icebergs e Figures 4 and 5. I replaced the labels and captions on Play-
fair’s diagram with excerpts from a novel about climate change, George Turn-
er’s The Sea and Summer (Turner, 1987), to further suggest the diagram
communicates something about climate change without using scientific data.
At a glance the diagram appears to be a visualisation about global warming/

glacial melting, but on closer inspection it reveals a confusing narrative. The
paragraph at the bottom of the diagram informs viewers that this is a deliber-
ately ambiguous image, and draws attention to the designer’s ‘authorship’ (see
Figure 5):
The text fragments and labels in this diagram are extracted from the post-
script to George Turner’s 1987 climate change novel The Sea and Summer,
in which he states that his novel explores the possible cost of political and
ecological complacency: "We talk of leaving a better world to our children
but in fact do little more than rub along with day-to-day problems and
hope that the longer-range catastrophes will never happen. Sooner or later
some of them will. Sleep well." Yet Turner denies the novel is prophetic or
offered as a dire warning. This diagram is a visual interpretation of one
‘major matter’ Turner suggests we need to consider e the Greenhouse Ef-
fect e yet I deny that it means anything at all.
I failed in my aim to produce a diagram which communicates ‘nothing at all’.

Although confusing, the diagram still communicates something, which I came
to understand is precisely Drucker’s point. However, reflecting on the ‘failed’
experiment led to a significant insight: visualising the relationship between fic-
tion and the context in which it was written might provide alternate ‘thresholds
of interpretation’ (Genette, 1997) to both the novel and the social issues it ad-
dresses. This provided a shift in the ‘design horizon’, leading me to ask: How
might I produce a diagram which functions as a ‘discursive tool’/paratext for
generating conversation about ecological issues? Through reflective documenta-
tion (see Figure 6), the result of this design practice was not just a diagram, but
also a new research question.
Figure 4 Pages from an exhibition catalogue, compiled from my Reflective Experiment Log data, communicate some of the iterative design process and reflections from this experiment
Figure 5 Diagram 1: Possible Cost of Complacency (first iteration), with detail
Figure 6 Reflective Experiment Log (notebook) reflection on action after the first iteration of Diagram 1, showing my revelation that the experiment failed in its aim but opened new lines of research
inquiry
Figure 7 Diagram 2: Last of Meeting Places (iteration 1), with detail
Diagram 2: Last of Meeting Places
The new research question e How might I produce a diagram which functions
as a ‘discursive tool’/paratext for generating conversation about ecological is-
sues? e led to the second experiment, ‘Last of Meeting Places’. This diagram
blends text from Nevil Shute’s post-apocalyptic novel On The Beach with data
about nuclear weapons testing conducted on Australian territory at the time of
publication. Shute wrote the novel in 1957 (Shute, 1957) after emigrating to
Australia from Britain. In the five years preceding publication, the British gov-
ernment tested thirteen major atmospheric nuclear weapons on Australian ter-
ritory. Presenting factual data about nuclear tests from the era in which this
classic novel was written gives contemporary readers context by which to
consider both the novel, and a devastating nuclear history that has been widely
forgotten. In the process of designing this second diagram, I shifted from
working with deliberately ambiguous graphic elements e icebergs in the pre-
vious diagram e to considering how I might embed graphic elements which
function as a visual metaphor; the mushrooms in this diagram represent nu-
clear explosion (see Figure 7).
3.2.4 Peer critique

In May 2017, I exhibited the first iterations (diagrams) at a small gallery oppo-
site the university; research exhibitions are a forum for inviting feedback on
design artefacts. This differs from a fine art practice, in which exhibited
work is usually considered ‘finished’. Critique from colleagues at the exhibi-
tion and after, led me to redesign both diagrams and extend the research
agenda beyond an exploration of Drucker’s Graphesis.
In particular, Jacqueline Gothe, an expert practitionereresearcher in my field,

verbally critiqued the diagrams at the exhibition: she felt the second was less
convincing than the first because the graphic elements did not ‘read’ clearly
enough as mushrooms, muddying the communication more than I intended,
and questioned whether ‘mushroom cloud’ is a sufficiently complex metaphor
(design agenda). She also questioned my use of the term ‘rhetorical’ to describe
the function of these diagrams, which carries different associations in the hu-
manities and design (Research agenda). I documented the feedback in my
Reflective Experiment Log, see Figure 8. Weeks later, another conversation
in my office, where the diagrams were pinned up, allowed me to clarify Gothe’s
critique. I documented both our conversations retrospectively in my journal.
After the second conversation, a post-it note reminded me of the critique as
I periodically looked at the work; during teaching semester I pin research pro-
jects where I can see them to allow ideas to marinade slowly, while my brain is
primarily occupied by teaching and administrative activity.
Almost a year later, responding to peer and self-critique from the exhibition, I
redesigned the diagrams. Further research revealed that some mushrooms
Figure 8 Capturing informal peer critique. Journal notation of conversations at an exhibition of the work (left) and post-it documentation in my office (right), from several expert colleagues
absorb and concentrate radioactive isotopes from soil; in addition to a visual
analogy for nuclear explosions, mushrooms represent a bittersweet hope that
even if humankind orchestrates a nuclear holocaust, the planet may regenerate
without us. Extending the metaphor beyond the literal ‘mushroom cloud’
prompted me to add more contextual information (text excerpts) to offer
further thresholds of interpretation.
To provide additional ‘thresholds of interpretation’ for the issue this work ad-
dresses (consequences of nuclear weapons), this iteration (see Figure 9) in-
cludes factual information (mushrooms’ capacity to absorb radioactive
isotopes, horrifying witness accounts of the nuclear tests, and that 15,000
active nuclear weapons are known to exist today) alongside a quote from
one Shute’s characters: “‘It’s not the end of the world at all,’ he said. ‘It’s
only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan’t be in
it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.’”
While conducting the mushroom research (design agenda), I came across new
theoretical anchors: Anna Tsing’s Mushroom at the End of the World (Tsing,
2015), and subsequent Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (co-edited, Tsing
et al., 2017). These texts unfurled new research questions and objectives
including: the potential for ‘design fictions’ to inform ecological storytelling;
examining narrative approaches to information visualisation in the natural sci-
ences; ‘genre blending’ as a strategy for ‘futuring’. I am currently producing
work for ‘Endgame Part 3: Novel Landscapes’, after a body of work titled
‘Endgame Part 2: The Everything Change’ completed and exhibited in early
2019. The critical documentation practice is increasingly valuable as the design
practice and research agenda continue to evolve in this expanding project.
Design artefacts from ‘Endgame: Part 1’ have been exhibited in two local ex-
hibitions, as well as at the ‘Rooms of Interest’ exhibition at the double-blind
peer reviewed RtD2019 conference in Delft. A booklet documenting the
research process and final artefacts was exhibited alongside the diagrams in
all three venues, and is available to order via my website and on Blurb (a
print-on-demand publishing service).
3.3 Reflection on the critical documentation practice

The case study demonstrates how following the guidelines for critical docu-
mentation results in an evidence base for scholarly reporting, as described at
the start of Section 2:
i) generating Progressive Overview Maps facilitates documenting an evolving

research agenda, including shifts in the design horizon (Figure 1), and can
communicate the research under-pinning design artefacts in pubic presenta-
tions (Figure 2);
Figure 9 Diagram 2: Last of meeting places (iteration 2)
ii) recording Contextual Anchors, both design precedents (Playfair’s dia-
gram) and scholarly texts (Drucker’s Graphesis) allows me to show the
overlapping design and research strands of the project and forms a contex-
tual review for presenting or writing about the project in scholarly contexts
(see Figure 3);
iii) detailed Reflective Experiment Logs document reflections on and for
design practice that can evidence insights that arise through design pro-
cesses and inform both the design (Figure 4) and research (Figure 6)
agendas of an RtD project;
iv) documenting Peer Critique can provide reflective prompts that lead to new
strands of research and design inquiry (Figure 8).
‘Endgame: Part 1’ began as a way to interpret Drucker’s theory of Graphesis,

through reflective practice. Throughout her book, Drucker uses a plethora of
visual examples to both support and make arguments, in an exemplary way.
However, these examples are critiques of final design artefacts (information
graphics, graphic interfaces and some RtD projects); there are no examples
from a practitioner’s perspective. As stated above, Drucker puts forth a prov-
ocation for design and humanities scholars to experiment with ways to reveal
the inherent ambiguity and subjectivity embedded in design processes; an invi-
tation to extend her theory with case studies from practice. Together, the two
diagrams and critical documentation of the design process for ‘Endgame: Part
1’ constitute such a case study, extending Drucker’s theory from the experience
and perspective of a design practitioner.
The case study reported here is the first iteration of an ongoing RtD project.
As the project expands, the potential for both the designer’s agenda (devel-
oping my own experimental information visualisation practice) and the
Research agenda (interpreting and extending Drucker’s theory of Graphesis
from a practitioner’s perspective) also expands. In other words, what is re-
ported here is a small, initial claim to what I hope evolves into a more signif-
icant development of my own RtD practice and contribution to scholarly
knowledge. The ongoing critical documentation practice provides a ‘credible
evidence base’ for demonstrating how transferable original knowledge has
emerged through practice.
4 Discussion
The guidelines for critical documentation presented here extend existing ap-
proaches to documenting design research, most notably Pedgley’s widely-
used diary model, by: contextualising a RtD project within Design literature
and design precedents, as well as within a researcher’s own ‘genealogy’ of
RtD practice; providing prompts to elicit reflections on (research agenda)
and for (design agenda) practice; and arguing that documenting expert peer
critique in formal (public presentations) and informal (private conversations)
settings is valuable for Design discourse.
Returning to Bardzell et al. (2016)’s three concerns for RtD documentation e

medium, performativity (referred to as ‘generative’ in this article) and equal
support of design and research agendas e the final section further argues
how the proposed guidelines contribute to Design scholarship and address
the aims set out at the start of the article.
‘Design’ is an extended family of practices e including but not limited to visual

communication, product, interaction, fashion and animation e each with con-
ventions for undertaking, documenting and sharing practice in mediums
appropriate to the particular practice. This presents a major obstacle for
creating a definitive documentation tool that suits the idiosyncrasies of all
members of the Design family. Here, the emphasis is on the difference between
offering tools to facilitate the medium of documentation (such as the previ-
ously mentioned Dalsgaard and Halskov’s PRT system or Pedgley’s proforma
sheets), and offering guidelines for developing a documentation practice
appropriate to the particular researcher.
Although there are suggestions for digital tools within the guidelines, the
intention is for individuals to develop protocols for capturing and archiving
content in formats and media that best suit their own practice and discipline,
with an emphasis on what to capture over how to capture it. For example, the
‘How’ section of Reflective Experiment Logs invites researchers to consider
how, what and when to document, and offers pros and cons of analogue versus
digital documentation tools; this surfaces the challenges of documentation me-
dium for the researcher to consider in relation to their own practice, rather
than offering a concrete tool or solution.
The medium for documentation described in the Endgame case study may
sound haphazard e combining a paper journal with apps and cloud storage
for different documentation types e but it works for me. I have tested
numerous digital tools and systems designed to ‘streamline workflow’ but
abandon them when they fail to accommodate the particularities of what
and how I design. Setting up a research blog using the guideline’s four content
types as index categories has been fruitful for my under- and postgraduate stu-
dents (and during my own doctoral research), but I hesitate to tie my practice
to technology that requires updating and learning new technical skills each
time apps relaunch or hardware changes. Developing a documentation prac-
tice with an emphasis on criticality over tools allows researchers to incorporate
new mediums and tools over the course of a career, or as one’s work environ-
ment changes.
The Endgame case study demonstrates how the guidelines foster a generative
documentation practice. In particular, the prompts for reflection within the
guidelines (particularly in the Peer Critique and Reflective Experiment Log
categories) are intended to facilitate drawing out insights that generate further
design and/or research activities. Examples from the case study are reworking
the mushroom graphics (design agenda) and adding new contextual anchors
(Research agenda). As a teaching resource, these prompts are instrumental
in a developing students’ capacity to perform self-motivated experimental/crit-
ical practice, rather than waiting for feedback before progressing. As a com-
mercial designer who has transitioned to scholarship, I trust that following
the ‘Reflective Experiment Log’ guidelines will capture my reflective practice
as research data for scholarly reporting, which allows me to lean into the
design phases of my practice with less anxiety about whether this work will
amount to ‘Research’ at a later stage.
Therefore, these reflective prompts are also crucial for addressing Bardzell
et al.’s third concern e that of offering equal support for the design and
research agenda. In addition to the prompts in the Reflective Experiment
Log and Peer Critique categories, the Progressive Overview Maps and Contex-
tual Anchor categories facilitate drawing out how and where design practice
informs, and is informed by, literature and design precedents. Documenting
scholarly reading and inspiration from design artefact/process precedents
alongside and amongst the design practice provides a map to untangle the
coupling/decoupling of practice and research over the duration of long and
often rhizomatic project arcs. This, in particular, distinguishes the guidelines
for critical documentation from existing documentation approaches, which
focus exclusively on capturing ‘black box’ activities.
As argued above, evidencing the role of peer critique in the research process
requires more attention. The kind of peer critique described in the Endgame
project is not suggested as a direct equivalent to scholarly blind-peer-review,
but rather an invaluable aspect of RtD practice that deserves discussion in
Design literature. Researchers often work alongside or communicate with ex-
perts in the field about the design work undertaken as part of research practice.
To truly open the ‘black box’ of practitioner research, this discursive,
community-based peer review can evidence how critique embedded within iter-
ative design processes is integral to successful RTD practice.
Just as Drucker calls for practitioners to demonstrate her theory of Graphesis,

this article calls for other design researchers to report case studies in which a
critical documentation practice has resulted in original and transferrable
knowledge. Learning to document, as well as learning from documentation,
will be facilitated by exposure to a suite of exemplars from a range of design
practices. This article briefly presents a single, small-scale example of what is
a highly complex zone of activity in design research. Further case studies will
be invaluable for training students and practitioners new to scholarship.
Finally, design researchers should approach a critical documentation practice

like every other practice; expertise will develop iteratively, over time. Perform-
ing documentation ‘trial runs’ before committing to critically documenting a
large project is advisable, because figuring out what to document in a given
project is an ongoing challenge. Learning to critically document one’s own
design practice is a first step; anticipating how to document shifts in one’s
evolving practice is ongoing.
Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or
personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported
in this paper.
Acknowledgements
The colleagues named, with permission, in this manuscript have critiqued the
guidelines for Critical Documentation, the RtD case study, or both. In addi-
tion, I acknowledge feedback and critique from my colleagues Tom Lee, Jac-
quie Kasunic, Monica Monin and Andrew Burrell, as well as post- and
undergraduate students who have helped me refine and develop these guide-
lines over the years.
Notes
1. Throughout this article, I use ‘research through design’ (RtD) to refer design practice
carried out as a mode of scholarly inquiry, a term used for more than 20 years by the
community of practitionereresearchers who participate in the RTD conference series
(see Durrant, Vines, Wallace, & Yee, 2017; Wallace, Yee, & Durrant, 2015). I use ‘prac-
titioner-research’ to refer to practice with both design and Research agendas, as dis-
cussed further in the body of the article.
2. Pedgley uses ‘practice-led research’ to describe “a mode of enquiry in which design prac-
tice is used to create an evidence base for something demonstrated or found out.” (p. 463)
The same activity is referred to as RtD in this article.
3. A documentation model which does address drawing connections between design prece-
dents and design processes is Dalsgaard et al.’s ‘Maps for Design Reflection’ (2009). The
authors propose three types of map e Overview, Strand and Focal Maps e which focus
on how ideas emerge from sources of inspiration, and transform through experiments
with materials, to “scaffold reflective analyses.” (p. 4) The maps are demonstrated within
a clear case study. There are similarities between these maps and the guidelines presented
here, such their Overview Maps as an “analytic tool for finished projects” (p. 5) which
aligns with the use of a refined Overview Map as a presentation artefact (see
Figure 2), and their ‘Focal’ and ‘Strand’ maps are similar to the ‘Reflective Experiment
Log’ in that they aim to document emergence of ideas in the design process (p. 5), how-
ever the ‘Log’ here is more detailed in ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ to generate documenta-
tion, and these guidelines include explicit documentation of theory (Contextual
Anchors) and significantly more detailed prompts for reflection on and for practice
than their model.
4. See, for example, McDonnell et al. (2004) on ‘video story-making’ as a method for elic-
iting and communicating critical reflections about design experiences. While framing
video story-making as a “powerful and accessible means of sharing knowledge” (p. 514)
they recognise the significant time required to review and edit footage and the danger of
slipping into ‘passive viewing.’ Similarly, Safin, Dorta, Pierini, Kinayoglu, and Lesage
(2016, p. 25) describe a software tool designed to connect “affective experience to the
very particular moment when the ideas emerge” without interrupting the ‘flow’ of a
design process and later be triangulated with other data such as verbal analysis, however
the time and costly resource allocation of such a tool renders it impractical for many
practitionereresearchers.
5. Researchers may prefer terms such as ‘events’ (see Dalsgaard & Halskov, 2012); the
guidelines are intended to be adaptable to the particularities of one’s own practice and
discipline.
6. I developed this practice during my doctoral research, when I created A3 maps before
supervision meetings, to keep discussions focussed on aspects of the research I needed
feedback on. These maps were annotated with feedback during meetings, then I created
a new map in the days following to keep me on track until the next meeting. I ended up
with 83 maps tracking the evolution of my thinking and many diversions, which were
invaluable during the final writing phase (see Sadokierski, 2011).
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Developing Critical Documentation Practices For Design Researchers

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Developing critical documentation practices

for design researchers

This article presents guidelines for developing a critical documentation practice;

Keywords: reﬂective practice, design methods, design education, design critique,

Therefore, this article presents a set of guidelines for developing a critical

A systematic documentation practice may seem like common sense to estab-

This distinction is often described as the diﬀerence between ‘research’ and

2 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

1 Documentation in design education and RtD literature

Done well, these ‘synthesis documents’ provide an evidence base by which to

When design students transition to professional work, many continue docu-

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 3

Graduate students and established designers transitioning to academia may

1.2 Documentation as a scholarly design research method

4 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

Pedgley’s pragmatic approach is primarily concerned with revealing ‘black

However, although widely adopted, Pedgley’s approach does not explicitly

Therefore, the proposed guidelines extend Pedgley’s model by emphasising

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 5

In addition to their literature review the research teams conducted a collabo-

First, the medium of RtD documentation. Design documentation generally in-

Second, the performativity of the documentation, or, ‘documents as speech

6 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

A type of generative documentation that is not addressed in Bardzell et al. is

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 7

2 Guidelines for developing a critical documentation

8 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

2.1 Progressive overview maps

How: These maps can be short written statements, or diagrammatic sketches.

To start, respond to these prompts adapted from questions posed in Boothe

I am exploring: [A speciﬁc topic, question, phenomenon, process]

by doing: [Processes and methods]

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 9

2.2 Analysis of contextual anchors

Why: Tracking when, within a research project, a text/theory/artefact/project

2.3 Reﬂective experiment5 logs

10 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

Why: To record aims, processes/methods and critical reﬂections on and for

Following are prompts for what to document, and when.

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 11

2.4 Reﬂecting on peer critique

Why: First, receiving critique can be diﬃcult; feedback is often missed/misin-

12 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

Documenting critique ensures that instances in which critique leads to a signif-

How: It is important to clarify what is to be critiqued e design processes and/

a) Capture the critique. Audio or video recording (with permission) allows

3 Critical documentation case study: Endgame Part 1

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 13

3.1 Project overview: Endgame Part 1

“Most information visualizations are acts of interpretation masquerading as

Currently, anyone with basic computer skills can produce convincing-looking

To demonstrate how visualisations function as arguments, Drucker calls for

14 Design Studies Vol xxx No. xxx Month xxxx

Reﬂecting on Drucker’s provocation for experimental visualisation and the

How might I design a deliberately deceptive diagram that appears to commu-

Therefore, this project is an example of RtD as an exploratory mode of inquiry

3.2 Critical documentation in the RtD project Endgame:

Critical documentation practices for design researchers 15

3.2.2 Contextual anchors