Babapour et al., (2012) The influence of self-reflective diaries on student’s design processes

Short summary of scope and focus

This work focuses on the use of self-reflective diaries as an educational tool for students in Design studies. It also aims at filling a research gap in long-term studies of design activity for designers in general, not just design students. The implementation was conducted by means of Advanced Form Design course (7.5 ECTS, master’s level), involving a total of 50 students, over a period of three semesters. Note that, in each semester, there’s a new set of students, so it’s not following 50 students over the course of three semesters. Details of numbers of students in each semester can be found in the article.

Contribution to the field

“However, what have been generally missing are complementary long-term studies of design activity (i.e., lasting many weeks or months), which can ‘flesh out’ in much greater detail how a designer progresses from a brief to a proposal. In other words, studies that reveal the precise path of design thinking and design decisions made during a project. ... In this present research, we were occupied with point (ii) – the uncovering and communication of design practices as an educational tool, to aid students’ product form creation processes.”

Considering the research question which was mainly about conducting a long-term study for design processes, authors’ claim in this work are, well, not wrong. A long-term study has indeed been conducted, following certain protocols and analyses and theories. However, this article reads like a report of facts, in a sense that there is almost nothing I can take out of it besides the fact that using diaries as educational tools mostly give a positive influence . In the article, it has been mentioned that

there have been some adjustments/ improvements in the template of the diaries given to the students, done based on the experience and/or input from the previous semester(s). This template for a structured diary writing, despite having gone through some re-thinking and re-formatting and, therefore, plays an important factor in the students’ feedback, are not provided in the article. It is said in the article that there are some pitfalls of using diary methods, and to me this makes it even more important for educators and readers to understand the process and reasoning behind the diary template (e.g., whether the template is design studies specific, or can be applied to studies in engineering, etc.), which unfortunately is missing from the article.

I picked out this article among the rest mainly because I am myself writing multiple self-reflective work/ research diaries and it is quite an important piece in how I conduct my own research. How I came to have such practice was out of habit and a continuous search for how I can work better, taking into account my tendencies, preferences, and personality traits. But since my diary writing has been

It has also to be taken into consideration that I am neither familiar nor experienced in conducting a qualitative research, as well as the norms and culture in research in pedagogy or design.

Adjusted to my own working condition, I was hoping to get more insights or best practices on how to apply or structure it for a class. Which, unfortunately, I did not get much from reading the article. Although, this article is still a positive confirmation to what I myself have been doing in my Computer Science research, albeit carried out for students in Design studies. So, at the very least, now I know that diary methods do work, although some serious thinking is required to overcome the pitfalls in the application of the method in students’ learning.