Zimmerman, Forlizzi & Evenson (2007), Research Through Design as a Method for Interaction Design Research in HCI, CHI ‘07 · doi:10.1145/1240624.1240704
What it is for
Knowledge produced by designing and building, where the iterative process — the decisions, the failures, the reasoning at each fork — is itself the finding. It is what licenses a thesis whose central evidence is a made object rather than a study.
Why it is the structural one
Every other method on this page analyses something. This one decides whether Projects counts as research at all. Without it I am a person who makes installations and, separately, writes about installations.
The condition attached to it is strict, and it is exactly where practice-based theses fail: the documentation has to be produced during the process, not reconstructed afterwards. A design rationale written after the fact is not evidence. It is a story about evidence, and the difference is visible to anyone who has written both.
When it will be reached for
The ZHdK Immersive Arts Space prototype, autumn 2026 — the research-through-design component of the thesis, and the only window for it.
Which sets a hard requirement: the decision log starts on day one of that residency, and each entry is written the day the decision is made.