Annotating voice in design research
Elvia Vasconcelos, Kristina Andersen, Ron Wakkary · 2025
Design research processes are complex, and it is difficult to open them to others.As design researchers, we are often challenged with communicating the nuances behind these processes in ways that highlight what might be meaningful and transferable to others.Further, there are often specific lenses that we use to analyse and cut across our work, but these cuts are often difficult to convey.This Work in Progress presents an analytical approach to investigate a design research process through the lens of voice.This uses annotations to investigate voice in a set of design research artefacts, such as sketches and embroidery pieces.Re-examining these artefacts through this specific lens allowed us to reveal deeper layers of information, uncovering richer and more nuanced insights.The result is an analysis that foregrounds voice in design research, which we propose is a way to consider the complexities of such processes in greater depth.