glossary
glossary This glossary is meant to give newcomers some grip on the jargon in the field, giving informal definitions to help the reader place unfamiliar terms. But don’t mistake them for precise scientific definitions that will stand up in court. For those, you will have to look in the appropriate theory (and also there find, unfortunately, that a crisp and sure definition is not often given). abduction: logical thinking process, closely connected to creativity, in which background knowledge is connected with a problem, resulting in a new solution abstraction: the process of making more general statements out of particular ones academia: the academic world, e.g., universities and research institutes (as opposed to business organizations) action research: a research methodology in which interventions are made into an existing practice, and the effects of these are assessed, typically in collaboration with all participating actors actionable: useful in the sense of helpful for undertaking concrete actions or for making (business) decisions advocate: somebody who is enthusiastic and active/vocal about something aesthetic: relating to the form or beauty of an object affective: relating to feelings and emotions ambiguous: having multiple meanings at the same time analyzing: making sense of research data by fitting it into a theory, or building theory onto, or out of, data anecdote: a story from real life expressing a specific point about a topic annotate: make notes and interpretations related to pieces of data anonymize: hide the identity of people in a piece of research data architecture: design discipline dealing with buildings and the built environment artifacts: things that were made by people, e.g., photos, collages, recordings associative thinking: thinking by means of connecting ideas to each another attitude: readiness to act or react in a certain way
bisociation: creative process (by Koestler) in which two apparently unconnected ideas become connected, leading to new directions to be explored booklet: small book, see workbook brainstorm: group activity in which participants try to quickly generate many solutions for a given problem or ideas about a given topic bridging: making the connection between research thinking and design thinking brief: goals and objectives for the design (research) team at the beginning of the project; often this has the status of a contract between client and team cards: pieces of cardboard or paper that each contain a chunk of information. Typically used to allow for selecting, sorting, categorizing, especially in team settings category: a grouping of items that have something in common cause: A is the cause of B if A occurred before B, and is the necessary explanation as to why B came about centric: X-centered designing is a method or approach to designing, in which X is the center of attention, discussion, and criteria for success chart: a two-dimensional graph used to provide overview and coordination closure: bringing an event to a (satisfying or emotional) completion cloud of ideas: a network of connected ideas, linked by associations clustering: putting items into groups or categories co-creation: collaborative creative action, event or artifact. Sometimes used to refer to codesign as a whole, sometimes used to refer to a single event with stakeholders coding: assigning category codes to pieces of data cognition: the way people think, in the broadest sense of the word 'think' cognitive toolkit: generative toolkit, typically for expressing processes and relationships collage toolkit: generative toolkit, typically for expressing memories and emotions communication design: design discipline focusing on communication media, e.g., print, film concept: see design concept
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