At Design Research Society's 2026 biannual conference (Link) hosted by the University of Edinburgh, my colleague Xiaozhuang Gao (ECA Profile) and I delivered the workshop 'Practice made Visible' as part of the PhD hub. The aim of the workshop was to generate discussion around the problems of documenting creative practice in a manner that it is seen as a serious research contribution.

Background

Knowledge resides in the triangle of the ‘maker,’ the ‘making’ and the ‘artefact,’ suggest practitioner-researchers Mäkelä and Nimkulrat (2011; citing Mäkelä & Routarinne, 2006, pp. 21–22). Indeed, irrespective of one’s field, it can be seen to emanate from each of these nodes (Figure 1). For instance: (1) a mathematician’s experience (the maker) shapes the problems they choose to approach; (2) the act of working through the math problem (the making) generates knowledge that guides how they navigate it; and (3) the resulting solution, or lack thereof (the artifact), produces knowledge that comes to influence the broader field—and the mathematician themself. Traditionally, when staying within the bounds of the tame, knowledge generated from this triangle has been seen as serious, replicable and communicable. However, since the advent of the practitioner-researcher within the creative fields—who frequently engage with the wicked—new forms of knowledge have been recognized that are difficult to see, let alone document (Messer, 2025).

This is because the problems that creative practitioners engage with are far messier. They address what Nelson and Stolterman (2014) call the ‘ultimate particular.’ As opposed to the generalizable universal truths that the scientific tradition seeks, the ‘ultimate particular’ are unique to their specific real-world contexts (Khan et al., 2020; Nelson & Stolterman, 2014) (Figure 2).

For instance, while the Pythagorean theorem would remain true for all mathematicians and their processes (Figure 1), the manifestation of a chair would depend on the unique maker-making-artifact triangle: the specific practitioner, their specific process, and their specific artefact (Figure 3). This displays the irreducible nature of the knowledge generated here, which cannot be documented as a replicable procedure—and therein lies the challenge in communicating it as research.

Complicating this further, Dalsgaard and Halskov (2012) argue that practitioner-researchers deal with multiple levels of wickedness. Some ongoing discourses around documenting one’s practice include:

1. Researcher versus Practitioner

   How do we concurrently inhabit the seemingly separate realms of practice and research? When do we stop being a practitioner and start being a researcher? How do we know what and when to document?
   

2. Academia versus Industry

   How do the documentation practices from academia translate to the expectations of the industry?
   

3. Individual versus Team

   And how might teams document their practice as opposed to an individual?

Because of the nature of the problem, there can’t be stable answers for any of these questions. There can’t be standardised documentation processes within which all unique maker-making-artefacts may sit neatly.

Besides, it is not verifiability that creative practitioners should seek, but believability (Figure 2). Therefore, through this workshop, we seek to ask:

How might we make irreducible research knowledge believable for academia so that it may be seen as a serious academic contribution?

The Workshop

The participants were given a brief refresh of some popular modes of documentation, which include:

• Physical Logging such as workbooks, journals, sketchbooks that let one compile text, sketches and images to capture your thoughts, feelings and ideas as they develop.
  

• Digital logs like a simple Word document or a more structured tool like the Process Reflection Tool that do much the same, but in a format that's easier to search, share and organise.
  

• Audio recording which is particularly useful for capturing narration or reflection in the moment—especially when one's hands are busy making.
  

• Photography that can capture both the process and the outcome—a quick snapshot can say more than a paragraph of notes.
  

• And video which can comprehensively document the act of making itself—including gestures, hesitations, and interactions with materials.

Part 1: The Maker

The workshop then invited the 19 participants (the makers) divided into 5 groups to: (1) reflect on their own practice and how they document it; (2) write their process on sticky notes; (3) place them on the 'Effort versus Believability' chart each group was provided; (4) discuss with others why they placed their method in their chosen place; and (5) move their sticky note if the discussion made them reconsider (Figure 4). 'Effort' was defined as the cost of documentation, including time, capital, physical and mental energy, the labour of processing and extrapolating data afterwards, and the burden of knowing what and when to document. Meanwhile, 'Believability' was defined as the degree to which one's documentation make their practice legible, convincing and trustworthy to others.

Part 2: The Making

Once the discussion concluded, the participants were asked to consider the pros and cons of the variety of methods in front of them, and using the method(s) of their choice document themselves during 'the making' of a paper plane (Figure 5). It was felt that a simple and playful design brief, will not only work well within the time constraints of the workshop, but also be engaging and accessible for participants of disparate disciplines and interests.

Another reasoning for choosing a paper plane over a more open-ended brief—addressing global warming, for instance—was that its outcome space is comparatively bounded: there are only so many ways to fold a paper plane. This constraint meant that any variation in the resulting artefacts (Figure 6) could be more clearly attributed to differences in the maker and their making, rather than to divergent interpretations of the problem itself.

Part 3: The Artefact

The workshop concluded with a final reflection on one's own documentation process during the previous activity, and a final opportunity to discuss and make changes to each groups 'Effort versus Believability' chart (Figure 7). A few broad observations emerged, though the data is still being extrapolated in full. There was a clear triangulation of mediums: several participants combined written notes with photography or video rather than relying on one mode. One participant's process—visible in a cluster of paper planes that appeared to iterate from one to the next (Figure 6, Top-Left)—suggested that an artefact's own progression can function as documentation, without recourse to notes, photos, or video at all. And movement on the Effort/Believability chart was less common than the addition of further sticky notes to an existing position: participants tended to layer in nuance and detail on reflection, rather than revise their original placement.

The workshop didn't settle the question we opened with—nor did we expect it to. But watching nineteen practitioner-researchers document the same simple brief in nineteen different ways made the maker-making-artefact triangle tangible in a way the literature alone couldn't. If nothing else, 'Practice made Visible' showed that the challenge of documenting creative practice is not a problem of finding the right method, but of recognising that no single method will ever be right for everyone. We're continuing to work through the data collected on the day, and hope to share a fuller account of what it reveals in due course.

Bibliography

• Dalsgaard, P., & Halskov, K. (2012). Reflective design documentation Proceedings of the Designing Interactive Systems Conference, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. https://doi.org/10.1145/2317956.2318020

• Khan, A., Snow, S., & Matthews, B. (2020). Tracing Design: Practitioner Accounts of Design Value, Documentation & Practices. https://doi.org/10.1145/3357236.3395537

• Mäkelä, M., & Nimkulrat, N. (2011). Reflection and Documentation in Practice-led Design Research. Nordes(4).

• Mäkelä, M., & Routarinne, S. (2006). An introduction to the art of research. The art of research: Research practices in art and design, 12-38.

• Messer, S. (2025). Documenting practice research: constraints and opportunities. Journal of Engineering Design, 36(3), 405-438. https://doi.org/10.1080/09544828.2024.2427558

• Nelson, H. G., & Stolterman, E. (2014). The design way: Intentional change in an unpredictable world. MIT press.