DESIGN RESEARCH DISSERTATION - PROJECTS



15.04.2020 - 15.07.2020 (Week 1 - Week 14)

Helen Angelia (0336203)

Design Research Dissertation

Projects - Draft Dissertation, Final Dissertation with Visual Design, Journal Publication



Module Information Booklet (MIB)




Progression Sheet



Week 1 - Week 2

Dr. Hayati and Dr. Jinchi briefed us about the MIB and how we are going to make our dissertation from the methodology research we had conducted from the previous semester.

 

Writing a Research Dissertation

First of all, we were instructed to make a literature review matrix. From all the articles we had read, both old ones or new ones, we were told to write it down in that matrix.

I have 10 critical reviews from the previous semester in Design Research Methodology and I began to search for new articles to strengthen my arguments in the dissertation draft later. I did my first attempt in making the matrix and Dr. Hayati commented that I should put keywords in one column. Keywords are basically and originally found and stated in the articles.

In the literature review matrix, I should also identify the weaknesses that I discovered and I may use color-coding to cross-compare the similarity and differences. Since my past methodology was 2 previous semesters ago, Dr. Hayati suggested me to re-visit the older articles. I should also know about identifying the research gap, advantages, and disadvantages by differentiating the pros and cons.


Literature Review Matrix

After the literature review matrix is done, we moved on to how to write the first part of the dissertation which is a literature review draft. The body of the writing has to come from sub-titles and they are usually from themes.  In the literature review, it introduced what kind of articles I have used and by identifying a number of articles, revealing are the similarities and differences. I also have to rely on the research question.


How to Write a Literature Review

If I ever confused about writing it, search how to write a literature review on the Internet. There are many forms made by many authors. One thing I should remember is that the main of a dissertation is the discussion part. Half of the dissertation is the discussion session.

Also in writing a literature review, justify the reasoning of the conclusion. Besides writing the authors' conclusions, I should put mine too.

Week 3 - Week 6

To help us write the literature review draft, Dr Hayati gave us a YouTube video link tutorial.


How to Write a Literature Review (2)


How to Write a Literature Review (3)

After we were done with the literature review, we go straight to working on our methodology part.



How to Write a Methodology

Then, to the results and discussion part.



How to Write Results and Discussion

The last part of this first project is how to write abstract and conclusion as the finishing touch.


How to Write Abstract and Conclusion

Once I have done with half of the dissertation draft parts, I then uploaded my submission to the Google Classroom. 



Dissertation Draft #1 Attempt

For my revision, Dr. Hayati told me to put 1.4 in the introduction part, which is a conceptual framework. It has to relate back to Wayang and so forth. The framework is simplified from my dissertation. The title of the dissertation also looks like it's more to hypothesis and I should change it to 'A Study of Hybridity Between Japanese and Indonesian Style Character in Wayang'.

In the conceptual framework part, Japanese Animation and Indonesian Animation should be typed in capital letters, as well as the core ones. Hybridity parts did not look connected and Dr. Hayati advised me to add arrows to make it more clear it's relevant to each other and not different parts. 

As the upper parts are secondary data and below parts are primary data, I should put the details at the side of the framework so people would know which is which. Dr. Hayati said I should also add 1 more research question rather than only one for my dissertation, because I already had 2 research objectives.

Also, I need to revise the discussion part. I should classified the sections like literature review and compare and contrast supposed to triangulate. I need to have the beginning of the part, so the readers would not be lost and how does it able to research questions. I have to provide more information prior and bring both of the objectives and both questions in the discussion part.



Final Dissertation Draft

Week 7 - Week 9

For our second project, we were told to make a visual design mood board. I made a presentation slides to explain what kind of fonts, color palette, book cover, and more elements I would use for my book design. 


Dissertation Visual Design Guide


Visual Design Mood Board

Dr. Hayati said that the color palette is nice and she wants to look at the page layout of the book design as soon as possible.

As it was my first time designing a whole book in Adobe InDesign, I was not familiar with it. Even though I did design a short book in Typography Module, but it was already a few semesters ago so I had to jog my memory. It took me quite a while to figure out the features in InDesign.

Week 10

For this week, I started to make the page layout and how the placements will be, but I haven't designed the whole thing yet so it was still very plain.





Fig 1.1
Page Layout Progress

Aside from being plain and all, Dr. Hayati told me to make the page layout have a rhythm. Mine was still too stiff and very organized. She said I should break the rules more and to have more variation in the design. Also, since my theme is Indonesian and Japanese styles, she said I should make something like the references below.





Fig 1.2
Book Page Layout References

I followed Dr. Hayati's feedback and put illustrations of both Indonesian and Japanese cultures. I may not change a lot about the composition and placement of the page layout, because I'm not used in making a random kind of design. I guess I'm more to tidy and organized.

Oh, and I did bold quotations like the references above with different typeface and to highlight information I wanted readers to know, like the one the lecturer recommended me to do.

Week 12 - Week 13

On the very first page when opening the book, Dr. Hayati wants me to put a copyright kind of writing where my name will be written in there and other details to show my background. 

In the acknowledgment page, she recommended me to make the width of the text box to be the same with the title width. The same goes for the abstract page, but only a little bit of arrangement.

Dr. Hayati also suggested me to make the conceptual framework lines wavier, but I like it more if the lines were straight and quite stiff, because I wanted to show that the theme for my book design is old and vintage.

I have many quotations in some pages in my book and the lecturer said I should make it contrast than the other text box, such as Arial, Helvetica, and not too much kerning and leading.

Interview questions for the interviewee page feel the same as the other text box, I should put another background color for it to make it contrast than the other parts.

Finally, here is my final outcome of project 2, which is the Final Dissertation with Visual Design:


Here is the sneak peek to my book design:









Fig 1.3
Final Dissertation with Visual Design

After that, we moved on again to our final project which is Journal Publication. Dr. Hayati posted slides for us as a guide to turn our dissertation into an article.
 

How to Turn Dissertation Into an Article

After reading some of it, Dr. Hayati gave us a link of a guide to a journal template that could be used for us to convert our dissertation into an article. But first, I made my first attempt and summarised my dissertation into a journal.


Journal Publication #1 Attempt

I showed the lecturer my attempt in journal publication and Dr. Hayati commented and suggested some revision:
  1. In an abstract part, I should put keywords after that abstract and not prior. 
  2. The word 'Wayang' is not an English word and I would have to make it Italic.
  3. Instead of saying '...in this dissertation...' I should choose to say "in this journal/article, it was to highlight the research objective and research question" and "how the methodology enables me to answer the research question".
  4. The first paragraph and the second paragraph of the problem statement were almost similar to the introduction part. I should keep it simple and not repetitive.
  5. Correlate the qualitative research and quantitative research.
  6. Don't drag the words long like in the dissertation, make it straight to the point.
  7. "The interviewees helped to answer emails regarding their busy time..."
  8. "The researcher has received useful insights..."
Week 14

Dr. Hayati also said that I should follow the journal template she gave us through a link and I did. So here is the final outcome of the final project of design research dissertation module:


Journal Publication Final Attempt



REFLECTIONS

EXPERIENCES

When working on the dissertation draft parts by parts, I could not meet every week's deadline for each of them, except for the final submission of the draft. The dissertation does take a lot of my time to work on it, but I also had other assignments, so I can't really focus on working on it. Although for the final submission, I already knew what I wanted to do, like making the visual designs so I just had to type out the final writings and submit it in Google Classroom. I personally like the book design I've made, I only hope that the lecturer will too.

OBSERVATIONS

When looking at the examples and lectures given by Dr. Hayati, I am now quite aware of how to write a dissertation. It was quite challenging at first, but when I observed other authors' works as well, it became clear to me. I also had to search for many references in writing this dissertation, but they helped a lot in the end.

The visual designs were also quite hard. I felt that even though the book was not going to be printed because it's an online-based class, but it's still going to be an official creation of my dissertation. I believe that I had to make it like a real official book as much as possible. 

FINDINGS

I found out that writing a literature review is to point out the similarities and differences of various authors' works, methodology parts were divided into 6 parts to make it more clear how I, the researcher had done the research and writing results and discussion to discuss the methodology research more. 

I think the hardest part would be the discussion. Mostly I already pointed out points I wanted to say in the previous sections. For the discussion part, I was summarising and discussing the important things of my dissertation to answer the research questions and meet the research objectives. It was fun and challenging at the same time and I learned a lot through this. Not to mention the visual designs as well.

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