Most people don’t have a clue of what you’re doing as a PhD-candidate (I sure as hell didn’t…), so this is a list of things I’m doing nowadays. Hopefully you’ll understand the content, but we’re working on lots of abstract and difficult-to-explain-because-I-don't-understand-it-myself-yet-stuff, so be prepared for a certain degree of vagueness…

1) Attending the PhD-school, a course of 45 credits/"studiepoeng" (about one and a half semester) with PhD-candidates from design, urbanism and architecture. It’s mostly about getting an understanding and an insight in what research is all about. A way of thinking, a mindset for how to look at things. (And that is kind of difficult to explain…) Content: Talks, workshops and tasks about reading & writing processes, orientation/positioning of your research, your viewpoint, qualitative & quantitative methods, ethnography, urbanism, academic tools, referencing, how to do design research, design materials (e.g. a computer is a material for your design), learning to critique, and writing project proposals and literature reviews.

2) A quest for the good questions. Design research is not about having one fixed question in the very beginning, sticking to it, and find the answer. It’s about all the questions that appear in the process, because the new questions that arises are a part of the new knowledge we produce.

3) Writing a project proposal & literature review. I’m writing about what my project will be about nowadays. This means that my ambitions, the background/reasons for doing the project, the research questions, the methods and the literature all has to stick together. And I’m telling you; that is not as easy as it sounds like…

4) Designing concepts. My PhD is a part of a bigger research project, the delTA project with SINTEF and Opinion. I work on design cases for our partners; Kongsvinger municipality, NRK P3, Plan Norge and Edda Media. Me and some student assistants work on ideas, concepts and visualizations for the challenges these organizations have related to engaging youth. So far we have worked on two concepts, one for Kongsvinger Kommune about a website for youth to engage and initiate hobbies and activities, and one concept for NRK P3 about youth online participation and debating culture at P3 Dokumentars website.

5) Understanding “Research by Design”. When doing design research, the design is a way of getting new knowledge. This means that I need to find research questions that are both about the knowledge I want to find out by doing design, but also questions that are about the design itself. Why is this design work relevant, and what do I gain of knowledge from it?

6) Switching between “Nina the Designer” and “Nina the Researcher”. This probably sounds weird, but being a researcher is very different from being a designer, and it’s going to take time to learn to switch between this “glasses”. I need to look at my work and how I work from different perspectives, and analyse what I do in a way I haven’t done before.

7) Thinking & trying to understand abstract stuff. That doesn’t mean a lot of staring in the wall, but working actively by visualizing thoughts. A PhD is about working on complex issues, and mapping these issues in a "gigamap" or by creating inspirational cards (my way of structuring all the inspirational sources I discover along the way) are ways of “attacking” the PhD-project as a design project. Which makes a PhD more concrete. An example is the underlying issues of the design concept for Kongsvinger, where we work to engage youth there to participate in activities. All the mental, practical and physical barriers youth have for participating in a activity or sport on their spare time are useful to map out visually, in order to understand gaps and creative possibilities. Barriers and factors that are important for youth’s participation are f.ex.
family & personal resources,
friends or the lack of friends,
group identity and personal identity,
bullying,
personal engagement,
youth culture & attitudes (example from the youth culture in places like Kongsvinger; “Nothing ever happens here in Kongsvinger”),
difficulties in transport,
money

8) Discus & reflect on E V E R Y T H I N G. Academics are known for not being able to shut up, and sometimes we discuss banal and “obvious” thing for ages. To some people it seems weird, but the most banal things have so many layers of understandings attached related to time, people, trends and usage. When I look at Facebooks brand film I look at the storytelling, all the visual choices, the rhetorics, the emotions, the voice and why they chose video as a format – all the choices they’ve made to make you understand what they intend. This way of analyzing makes me learn to look for alternative ways and alternative methods that are better suited for the main goal.

9) Investigating deep AND broad. As opposed to what many people think, I’d argue that a PhD is not just about digging very deep into a very particular and detail little theme. It’s about broadening your view and looking at your own field and its role in relation to completely different fields. As Erling Dokk Holm said in a talk at the PhD-school; “If you go very deep, you can also be very broad” – in his dissertation he looked at coffee bars as a way of studying changing aspects of urban life, and about solitude and sociality in the public space.