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Editorial
English
DATJournal v.8 n.1 2023
New thinking in practice-led
research in Design in
Aotearoa New Zealand
In recent years, creative work and its potential relationships to scholarly
research are increasing in influence and introducing critical vitality to Universi-
ties, opening new approaches for collaboration, interdisciplinarity and commu-
nity engagement. For practitioners, it offers a research approach that merges
personal experience into the designer practice, skill set and design artefact.
Practice-led research is considered an approach to research through
practice, in which the research and the practice operate as interdependent and
complementary processes with specic methodologies, leading to original
forms of knowledge. In this framework, practice is the purposeful action taken
within a specic context by creative means: the making, modifying or designing
of design artefacts and processes.
The consideration of practice-led design has been part of the academic
landscape in the last years, with several PhD and Master’s programmes rais-
ing awareness of the particular kind of knowledge that creative practice can
convey. Knowledge, in this context, can take the format of new methods, tech-
niques, taxonomies and models. However, the application of practice-led as a
paradigm in tertiary design education is scarce and requires more investigation.
The DAT LINK 2023 Dossier showcase 12 designers/practitioners/re-
searchers: Damian Wilson, Izzy Hutcheson, Jade Chambers, Kat Frewen, Kexin
Shan, Kristen Lum, Ruby Brown, Sophie Ardern, Sophie Lewis, Silvia Kostandini,
Tara Falconer and Qianying Li.
This special issue presents their design projects led by creative prac-
tice conducted at Auckland University of Technology in Aotearoa New Zealand.
These emergent thinkers focused on personal reflections on their experiences
and what they investigated through doing their research projects.
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DATJournal v.8 n.1 2023
These new design researchers feel increasingly unsettled tensions
against conventional research methods, which seem too obtuse to record the
dynamic of the inquiry that lies at the center of their personal experience.
These academics undertook inquiries with a unique agency to the research
process through creative practices in the broad eld of Design, creating an ar-
tefact alongside a written exegesis to full academic requirements. Through
their research, they discuss outcomes such as research paradigms, frame-
works and methodologies that contribute to the knowledge or methods that
another practitioner can use. To do this, they invested in discursive reflec-
tions about the making processes they engaged in, including an account of
how any creative works were made and appraised.
The collection creates a unique voice that speaks outwardly to all
Design practitioners and the practice-led led research larger community and
raises awareness of the potential of practice-led research as a methodology
for practitioners. With the DAT LINK 2023 Dossier, we aim to foster reflection
on creative practice as an approach to research in higher design education.
At the same time, it offers scope for the investigation of practice as singu-
lar to the practitioner-researcher. While working within this scope, it is envis-
aged that some arguments and inferences will have applicability beyond the
Aotearoa and for other creative practices, practitioners and researchers.
Enjoy the reading!
Marcos Mortensen Steagall
Guest Editor