Definition of a Research Artefact

Research Artefacts as visualisation

A Research Artefact is an object that serves as a physical (and tangible) visualisation of a set of data values (researcher’s ideas, knowledge, information on a subject, wants etc…) that are personal to the researcher. It visualises a data set of the researcher in a form that is meaning full to them and can be categorised into three types.

Type One: An object that serves as a reminder to pursue and idea, find out more about something.

Type Two: An object that represents the process of an idea as we develop more about it.

Type Three: A representation of something achieved – the end of an idea.

Researchers fill there rooms with these artefacts and the location is not necessarily static. The location of the artefact is important and plays a fundamental part in creating the visualisation of the artefact to the researcher.

Examples of artefacts as visualisation

Researcher A(1) places a temperature sensor in his room. He puts it in his keyboard on his desk to remind him to look and find out how to use it better. In this scenario, the data is participant A wanting to find out more on how to use the temperature sensor and the visualisation is the sensor (as a physical object, not it functioning) and its location in his research space. The artefact is of type one and is providing an indexical representation to the researcher.

Researcher B’s (1) books are placed under categories that form the creation of a book proposal that he is developing. The data is that he wants to read a book called x because of y and the visualisation of this is the post-it notes and physical forms that sit in piles. This artefact is of type 2 and is again is an indexical representation to the researcher.

Objects serving as research artefacts do not usually represent all of the types presented above but, in rare cases they can do. Take for example a book. Looking at the physical object of the book, not the information inside it (the words) it can be a research artefact for all of the three type catagories presented above. In the context of type one, it could represent an artefact as the book object just being in our presence serves as a prompt to read it. In the context of type two, the book object could represent an idea that a researcher is perusing. Finally, in the context of type three, it could represent a project written up and published.

Primer focus

The type of artefact that I am choosing to focus on in my Primer project is Type one through developing symbolic representations. I am interested in looking at a research artefact as a representation of more than one thing, a representation in relation to a series of things.

My next step is to decide what the appropriate mapping would be that I would apply to the research artefact that I am creating. I would like to see this research artefact as an extension of the spatial probes that I have been developing in my linked research project in a sense that the software/artefacts that I create could be used as probes to deploy to the researchers that I have contact with.

Hypothesis:

Abstraction of visualisation is something that is representational only when the methodology is organised and conceptualised by the user. Fundamentally choice and customisation play an important role. I think that I will find that the tool used to create research artefacts may offer an appropriate visualisation for some people but not all. This is down to not everyone being able to relate to everything.

1. Smith.M. The Researchers Archive, Linked Research Project. 2011