Finding focus and balance for contextual reviews in multidisciplinary academic design research

The contextual review of prior studies is a fundamental element of postgraduate research projects but is neither well-established nor fully accepted in design research. Moreover, by comparison to more established disciplines, design research projects are often situated in multiple contexts of use and meaning, such as education, industry, markets or specific social spheres. In achieving sufficient intellectual depth to warrant a claim to scholarship, students and supervisors must often negotiate a difficult trade off between the number and nature of sources deemed adequate for critical analysis and review. Achieving depth while maintaining the research focus is one of the 'wicked problems' for design research. This paper reviews the importance of maintaining scholarship in postgraduate design research where the contextual nature of projects demands interdisciplinary knowledge. It is complemented by an example of a recent applied design doctoral project illustrating the nature of the challenge.