Main problems in plans

1. "Expression of interest" is not a research plan. Over the last two years, a good deal of applications have been what I call "expressions of interest" rather than proper research plans. By this I mean that they are more like applications artists write for foundations to get their art work funded rather than serious analytic work. Since most professors at the SoD are nice people, they typically say that these plans are interesting, and raise interesting and sometimes even important issues, but the plan is too unspecific to be taken seriously - and give you failed, sometimes encouraging you to reapply.

2. Question. It is difficult to write a good research questio. It has to be specific to be understandable, and to guide your thinking, but simultaneously, it has to be "large" enough to raise your level of ambition to a level required in doctoral work - essentially four years of work. One of the problems in design is that people try to solve too large problems. As a rule, you should not try to work on one concept, but to outline a question that works in the intersection of a few concepts (in boolean terms, AND operator with 2-4 concepts). Another problem is that research questions are often interesting on practical rather than research terms. Practical problems are for toe government and for engineers, nof to researchers to solve.

3. Lack of theory/perspective. This is the worst problem. Without a perspective even a good researcher only has lay imagination to rely on. Saying anything intellligen without a conceptual frame is hard.

4. Lack of specificity. Even if the topic is interesting and relevant, we cannot evaluate whether your plan is realistic and believable, unless you tell exactly: what literature you build on, which you criticize; what is your methodology; details of methods (get specific: who are you going to interview and how you process your data; how many experiments you plan to conduct; how your exhibitions relate to each other, and how they contribute to your research problem; etc.). These details always change when you do your research, but if you ask us to trust you, you're on shifting sands. Research world is all about skepticism, not faith.

5. Contradictory premises and methodologies. Doing serious research requires that you leanr from counteless predecessors. Do not try too much. Perhaps the most crucial problem is methodological: combining hypothetico-deductive and interpretive research styles is basically impossible, unless you know your history of science really well.

6. Overblown claims. We have had people who want to take two classes of philosophy at UIAH, and then contribute to philosophy. There is no way to succeed in this effort, unless you have a MA of M.Sc. in philosophy. Or, you cannot solve overpopulation through design.

7. Trying too much. One sure way to spoil a plan is to promise too much. Do not try to make a philosophical, theoretical and design statement in the same thesis, and work your way through your problem with qualitative, quantitative, and formal methods simultanously when you try to make them - using Nigel Cross's horrible word "designerly." You fail. No one can know everything. This is not a place to show off with your reading (and if you are a design student, you are not probably very well educated in sciences anyway).