Rigor and Practice-based Research

Rigor is one of the cornerstones of high-quality academic research. For example, the UK Research Assessment Exercise 2008 (RAE) describes the highest grade of research as possessing " quality that is world-leading in terms of originality, significance, and rigour. " 1 This paper addresses the criterion of rigor in the context of so-called practice-based research in design. It is the authors' view that difficult questions regarding whether arts or design practice is a distinct kind of research do not simply go away just because we would like them to.2 Therefore, we propose to examine the problem of rigor in design research as illustrative of the more general problem of whether design research needs to have special conditions or criteria applied to it. An etymological approach may mislead us, since some have associated rigor with rigor mortis: a certain stiffness of intellectual attitude or worldview that is incompatible with change and the new.3 Naturally, design communities would be opposed to the presence of rigor in practice if it were synonymous with inflexibility, because this would inhibit creativity. Thus, if Wood's definition of rigor in research were adopted, it would encourage the differentiation of traditional academic research from research that is conducted in areas of design practice; i.e., practice-based research (PbR). Such a separation between academic research and PbR would allow each type of researcher to develop their own criteria independently; for example, omitting or modifying the criterion of rigor. Ongoing debates discuss whether academic research in areas of design practice is, in some way, different from the research that is developed in other disciplines. Some of these debates originate in the UK as a result of the merger of polytechnics with universities in 1992. The effect of this merger was to establish a link between the presence of subjects in universities and the capacity of awarding Ph.D. degrees and conducting research. Some subjects including design and fine art, etc. had hitherto been unrepresented in this academic context. Furthermore, this merger coincided with, or further caused, a broadening of the remit of the research funding agencies to include arts with humanities, and the broadening of the scope of the national research quality assessment exercise to include these new subjects. As a result, the criteria of what constituted research in any subject was opened to discussion and debate. Owing to the intellectual autonomy of the universities in the UK, they began to diverge …