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.