Thoughts on Structuring Design Research Artifacts

As I have tried to organize or improve various design research libraries throughout my design career I have encountered some counterintuitive insights. The primary one of these insights is that a less structured system often functions much better than one that has rigorous organization.

One system that I have found is effective for both sharing research insights between team members and maximizing utility is what is often called a “pile” system or metaphor. A pile in this context is an unstructured container that puts the most recent files at the top. In the context of a design research library, this would look like a single shared “folder” with all the research artifacts (documents) that are sorted by the date each was last modified.

Some benefits of a “pile” system are obvious. File management systems that require significant maintenance and a high bar for adding content are a pain to use and often overfit for a single workflow. This leads to degradation and fractoring of the system in a remarkably short time. Furthermore, every categorization method will, by definition, be an incomplete representation of the wealth of knowledge contained in the data. The author of The Thesis Whisperer puts it well.

complex knowledge work just resists most filing strategies.

These are the primary insights that led me to the conclusion that folders should largely be avoided in your research library.

A pile organization system can appear daunting when viewed without the context of an investigative toolkit for the researcher. For this system to provide the most value, the humans using it should use search and synthesis as their primary tools for discovery. I’ll cover these topics in more detail in later posts. The important thing is for the research “pile” to be searchable.

Hidden Benefits

Only after adopting this sort of system did I realize the less obvious benefits of a pile system. Some of this may be obvious to you but as I was moving through this process each of these insights was a satisfying “ah-ha” moment.

Sorting documents by “last modified” is an approximate way to sort by relative relevance. Research and reviews conducted more recently will more closely reflect the current product and will often have continuity with other recent research. (I think I may be exhausting my quota of words that start with “r”)

A simple system also allows different researchers to use substantially different methods while still sharing results and insights. As I have worked and talked with teams of varying levels of design research expertise, I have found many design researchers approach their process very differently. Having an “un-opinionated” system allows for each contributor to play to their strengths. This also facilitates practitioners being exposed to new methods that they can evaluate and adopt (or critique!) which can lead to higher-quality research outputs.

I could wax philosophical about piles and design research organization for many more paragraphs but I want to save some topics for more focused entries. I’ll wrap up here today with some tips.

Unsolicited Advice:

If you are spinning up a design research library I have some recommendations:

• Don’t overcomplicate it.
• Create a single folder in Google Drive or whichever shared document repository you use
• Use a shared repository that allows for keyword search of the content in all the documents
• Put every primary and secondary research artifact into the central folder (e.g. raw transcripts, interview notes, synthesis documents, research plans, etc.)
• Include a date in the title (my preference is YYYY.MM.DD at the start of the file name so it can be used to sort)
• In each file, the most important bits are who was there and their role

There are lots of ways you can layer more information and “metadata” on top of a system like this to assist with retrieving information.

Upcoming related topics

• Using Search to Maximize Value from Your Research Library
• Synthesis and Reflection Habits for Design Research
• Design Research Consistency: Habits, Norms, and Templates

References and Resources

I read through a few stellar research papers as I was looking deeper at digital file management and personal information management. If these topics interest you I recommend taking a look at the following papers which influenced my perspective and were relevant to writing this piece:

Are you a piler or a filer? from The Thesis Whisperer (2012)

How do People Manage Their Documents? An Empirical Investigation Into Personal Document Management Practices Among Knowledge Workers (2014)

A “pile” metaphor for supporting casual organization of information (1992)

The pile of least effort: supporting lived document management practices (2009)

The ubiquitous digital file: A review of file management research (preprint) (2019)