This is a great topic. I'm not sure what to add, but I'll try.

I work as a consultant and that provides me a very enjoyable context for doing research. I'm always coming into a new situation - a new company, a new set of individuals I'm working for (and often with), a new domain area. The process of coming up to speed is familiar, but the specifics and the hills and valleys I'll encounter provide a great challenge.

Of course when all is said and done, I can move along. Maybe I'll get asked to come back, but I'm not forced to live forever in any one area.

But my clients own the work and my motivations for sharing it are not the same as theirs. I love to tell stories about my work. I can market myself. I think I can help people learn something; at worst, I can entertain, or stimulate. But the details - the stuff that makes it real - are someone else's property, and they aren't looking to deal with the same things I am. So conferences - where there's a lot of detail on project work - are hard to get involved with. And I'm not likely to push hard on anyone to support me if I'm thinking more about my client relationship. That would be very uncool.

I've begun teaching an undergrad design course in "design research." It's a whole new experience for me, and again, the context is everything. Teaching is the dominant activity, whether it's painting or lawn-mowing or design research, it's more about teaching than it is the subject matter. What will I get out of it? I don't know. It was an opportunity, a sign of validation, something to be proud of, but I'm not sure where it will lead me in my career, or how it will inform what I do or how I do it (I've got some ideas, but that hasn't played out yet).

Incidentally, this blog was part of what I sent the students to look at, for their first assignment was to blog or flickr their own observations about "the world" and from what I've seen, NO ONE does it as well as you do, Jan. I'm just amazed, every post.

I think I have a similar eye to yours, but sometimes I hear your voice subtitling little observations I make (with or without camera) as I travel through the world.

Hei Steve,

Kind words indeed. Hmm, my take is there are lots of voices out there that haven't been heard so to some extent its just a matter of having platform from which to speak/write. (well and if it is more than that, its not by much).

I like the idea of a Design Research course. Where are you teaching? And what would someone expect to learn from attending the course?

Have been keeping an eye on this blog for a few months now and think it is super. Keep up the good work. Hope Nokia gets to use it, but as you say, the designers have to make an effort to come and learn about it because the interesting stuff happens at the edges.

I teach an undergrad course in the Industrial Design department at CCA (California College of Art, http://www.cca.edu) in San Francisco.

In other courses, design ones, typically, students, are given just a little bit of time to do some sort of research before they have to start designing. In this course, they have the whole semester to work on a research project, leading to identifying needs and some possible concepts. Or at least, that's the plan :)

The goal is to arm them with some actual technique for doing interview, observation, and synthesis. They seem really great with secondary research, but these are somewhat new activities, I think.