Abstract:
The generation of an artefact or a series of artefacts lies at the heart of most
practice based research projects in design (1). This is entirely appropriate given
that it coincides with the way that design is practiced as a profession. But
does it entail that the object of study of practice based research in design
should be the emerging artefact? My argument in this paper is that it may not
be of benefit to either the practitioner/researcher or to the domain as a whole
to conceive of their task as researchers as one where they are required to
validate the artefact(s) as a significant contribution to the domain.
