Design Inquiry Through Data

Abstract

The emergence of the internet and subsequent massive data collection and storage is creating vast opportunities for design research and practice. In this dissertation, we investigate the interrelationship between design and data science practices and explore data as a new creative lens for design inquiry. While digital data has been increasingly used by designers, such as using A/B testing to drive design decisions for internet products, data has been less explored as a resource for inquiry about the world. Despite how data-connected artifacts increasingly facilitate human interactions, designers’ repertoire still primarily relies on practices established for inquiring in the physical world. The current industry practice of integrating data scientists into the design team is neither affordable nor feasible to apply across the vast majority of contexts and cases where design operates. To address these problems, in this dissertation, we aim to deepen the theoretical and practical knowledge on the intersection of design and data science, and to develop methodological contributions to support future data-rich design practices. The main research question we pursue in this dissertation is “How can designers integrate data practices into design inquiry?” We address this question through conducting a Research-through-Design program to gain, on the one hand, a better understanding of how the fields of design and data science intersect, and on the other hand, to develop methodological contributions for future data-rich design practices. The resulting conceptual framework of Design Inquiry Through Data has been constructed throughout a series of empirical studies in which data-rich design practices are studied. For each study, practical data methods and techniques have been curated and/or developed...