On the afternoon of December 14th, in C205 multimedia classroom of the College of Art, Mr. Zhou Zhi from Tsinghua University College of Fine Arts gave a special lecture entitled "Design Research Methods and Thesis Writing Skills" for teachers and students of the college. The lecture was presided over by Zhao Hui, Dean of the college, and more than 100 teachers, graduate students, non-legacy seminar students and teachers from relevant universities in the province attended the lecture.
Decoration, sponsored by Tsinghua University College of Fine Arts, is the only dual-core journal of national design and art. Dr. Zhou Zhi is the editorial director and deputy editor of Decoration. He has presided over the columns of History on Space, Special Planning and College Style for many years. He not only has rich experience in editing journals, but also has in-depth research on the research trends and writing methods of design disciplines.
Dr. Zhou Zhi's lecture was divided into four sections: subject category, research path, writing skills and submission strategy, which were decomposed in detail respectively.
In the subject category section, Dr. Zhou focused on analyzing what design is and what design science is. He explained the practical, integrated and reflective features of design, and pointed out that design science was a discipline between humanities and social sciences, engineering and natural sciences, belonging to the relationship between people, industry and things.
In the research path section, Dr. Zhou analyzed what research is and what design research is, explained in detail that research is not equal to theory, and design research is the sum of theory and history, investigation, experiment and practice, and summarized three characteristics of design research: practicality, integration and reflection. The path of design research includes raising questions and assumptions, searching for materials and documents, selecting methods and tools, planning paths and ideas, conducting research and demonstration, drawing conclusions and reflecting. Only design research projects with academic value have the possibility of gaining recognition, and a fresh research path is an important guarantee for academic papers.
Dr. Zhou Zhi made a detailed analysis on how to choose the topic of academic papers, the collection of documents, the significance of reference documents, common cognitive errors, etc., and analyzed the validity and correctness of the research methods from both positive and negative aspects in combination with the contribution case of Decoration, and demonstrated the use of research methods in design research topics from case study, comparative study, visual analysis, document analysis, field investigation, document investigation and confirmation research.
The lecture explained the trilogy of thesis writing from the angle of academic article writing and answered the common questions such as why my thesis was always rejected. Dr. Zhou gave specific methods for writing the introduction, main body and conclusion of academic papers, and explained the unsuccessful manuscripts from five aspects: topic selection, literature, methods, argumentation and conclusion.
Finally, from the aspect of submission strategy, Zhou introduced where to submit art design articles, how to vote and three essentials of submission as well as three taboos.
