[Illustrating Research & Creativity #2] “What is ‘Contribution’? How to Do Research?” Part 2/3 — Dots and Arrows
My name is Ken Nakagaki, a PhD Student at the MIT Media Lab. In this blog series ‘Illustrating Research & Creativity,’ I describe concepts and methodologies that I found interesting through my research experience using simple diagrams and illustration.
In the last post, I have described what contribution is using the illustration extended on Prof. Might’s diagram by introducing z-axis.
In the second post of illustrating “What is ‘Contribution’? How to Do Research?”, I continue describing some primitive nature of research.
I use ‘Dots and Arrows’ to illustrate the act of positioning your research when writing a paper. Let’s start!
Dots and Arrows
This diagram starts with ‘a red dot’. This red dot represents a research project.
A research project which you came up with, and are developing / researching / studying.
When you write a paper, this red dot has to be placed on an arrow.
The arrow originates from a certain path (Context) towards another path (Vision).
Think about positioning your work in a certain context (or a trend) in a research field.
And, think of which direction the arrow point towards the future after your dot/research.
This is extremely important. Don’t get stuck only on your research itself but be aware of the arrow.
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One thing you need to be aware of is that this arrow is an accumulation of previous research and future research.
You are building your research on top of an amount of previous research.
And, a fruitful amount of future research may become possible thanks to your research / dot.
Multiple Arrows
You can seek to place your dots on multiple arrows — different research contexts / fields which infer the inter-disciplinary nature of a research (or even just contextualizing in multiple sub-area of a research field).
Being able to look at your research from different perspectives / contexts is important.
The image below is a very rough example of my previous research LineFORM. You could try illustrating your own version like this.
Multiple Dots and Drawing Your Arrows
Now, once you are experienced in research and, you may have done multiple dots / research projects — published multiple papers.
With that, you can start connecting the dots in different ways — drawing your own arrow.
If you have more dots…
…there is a possibility of drawing more variations of arrows, which may look like building your thesis or research group.
If you do that well and hard, that may become a ‘trend’ in a research field, where other people can follow and build upon.
This ‘stream’ is not possible by a single research project but requires multiple research projects.
“How would you build your own ‘trend’?”
…It is a tough question (that even myself is struggling through my Ph.D. process), but inevitable.
This is the end of Part 2 out of 3!
The next post will be the last one of the 3 parts which will illustrate how to compose your research paper step by step based on the diagrams of Part 1 & 2.
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