Approaches to Doing Pre-Thesis
A thesis project is your opportunity to take on a significant project on something that is of personal interest and value to you, which you would want to dedicate substantial amounts of time to. There are many different ways you could do a thesis, each entailing different ways of working and doing research and making artifacts, as well as different outcomes. We highly advise taking on an approach that fits the type of project you intend to do, and to think carefully on what kinds of projects you’re capable of doing justice to within the scope of what you already know and are proficient in, i.e. it would be very difficult for you to create a video game for your thesis if you’ve never taken any courses or have any experience in game design and development. We’ve defined three broad processes or workflows that could help you structure your workflow for the next two semesters:
1) Research through Art &\Or Design: This process usually fits theses where you intend to explore and extend the capabilities of a technology, tool, or explore new ways of working with materials, styles and forms, i.e. where you intend to mostly do research through materializing hypotheses and questions into prototypes and experiments, and testing what you’ve made over several iterations. This approach may also suit students who wish to create more speculative projects, creating critical art or design provocations, or projects that have a performative aspect.
Suitable if you’re thinking of doing: a thesis that involves a lot of formal, technical, or material exploration, esp. into new applications of technology; interaction design; critical\speculative design; tangible or video game design; new media or electronic art; installations\site or performance-based work.
2) Research for Art &\Or Design: This process is well suited for projects that involve you working with an identified need, want or challenge in a community or institution, where you work closely with stakeholders to come up with a solution or intervention. Students undertaking traditional UX, service, or systemic design projects will benefit from taking this approach. This approach emphasizes fieldwork where you study the phenomenon in the real world and understand what people think, do, want and need before you create anything.
Suitable if you’re thinking of doing: a UX, service, or systemic design project; communication design, advertising or branding; art projects aimed at raising public awareness and with a significant component of public engagement.
3) Research on Art &\Or Design: This process is for projects where you are interested in exploring and extending a body of theory, creating and testing a methodological framework or new set of methods, or designing to facilitate educating technology professionals or students on a certain body of knowledge. Usually this approach involves lots of literature review, and prototyping the methods or educational materials and techniques you’ve developed.
Suitable if you’re thinking of doing: a thesis project by publication, i.e. a monograph or archive etc. exploring and\or documenting historical or theoretical content; digital humanities projects; developing new theoretical or methodological frameworks and\or approaches in art or design practice; art or design criticism.