Creative Practice Research

This subject introduces students to a range of creative practice research methods that they will be invited to explore by framing self-directed design research inquiries. Supplementing traditional approaches to quantitative and qualitative research, creative practice research, also known as design research, has developed over the last thirty years. It involves experimental approaches to iterative design testing including critical reflection on design process. Creativity is open-ended and makes lateral moves that are often in contrast to the logical, linear and teleological thinking inherent to traditional research methods. Research can be defined as a search for new knowledge and an inquiry into things, and here design research distinguishes itself by incorporating tacit, embodied and situated knowledge, and by developing orientations emphasising the three registers of research about, for, and through design. In this subject students will develop innovative and interdisciplinary knowledge practices that foreground environmentally and ethically responsible engagements in our designed living environments with the aspiration of imagining the best of all possible planetary futures.