company, the impact the company might
have culturally or economically, and their
character. In this model, the vetting pro-
cess performed by GrowLab when choos-
ing companies acts as a filter. To provide
perspective, GrowLab accepts five com-
panies per cohort from an average of 400
applications. It is not necessarily within
the realm ofa university research depart-
ment to assess the quality of a business
case offered by a prospective partner in
research. Yet, it is very important, as it
affects the impact of the product, the fit
for the student, and reflects on the school
when measured in terms of the univer-
sity’s research mandate of cultural and
intellectual relevance.

SILOS

We learned during the course of this
project that the areas of program speciali-
zation that are key structures within the
university—such as industrial design,
communication design and interaction
design—had little effect within the com-
panies. From a disciplinary perspective,
these researchers were three interaction
designers (two full time and one contin-
uing studies), a communication designer
and an industrial designer. All research-
ers were equally able to contribute their
core skills, predicated around design
thinking, and have equal impact and
value on their teams, despite the fact that
the GrowLab companies operate in the

interaction-heavy context of technology.
What the designers had in common was

a certain level of proficiency with coding
HTML/CSS. We can reflect that digital
proficiency in front-end coding should not
be seen within the curriculum as a vertical
distinct from other design disciplines, but
rather should be treated as an approach
across all disciplines which, like media,
informs and affects most aspects of life in
contemporary culture.

R or D?

We found ourselves working in the spaces
between; between the student and the
startup, between the university and the
industry, between the accelerator and
the individual company, between our
research and the applied work of the
company.

This feeling of being “in between”
relates at least in part to the ambiguity of
what design research actually means in
the current frame of industry. The frame-
work of agile development in these com-
panies means that there is no true split
between “research” and “development”.
Research and development are both part
of a continual process of iteration and
production. Products are designed and
built, tested, redesigned, rebuilt and
tested again. Startups create software to
learn what is possible and how it might be
received. It is an accelerated process with
no beginning or end, and with few formal

phases; discovery is integrated through-
out the entire project timeline.

This approach is distinct from other
industries where more pronounced divi-
sions between research, design and
development may be in place. In this
environment, either research and devel-
opment are one and the same, or there is
no research, only development. The very
act of implementation and user testing
becomes the research.

To learn more about the explicit role of
research in the cultures and operations
of the five individual companies, we
performed exit interviews at the conclu-
sion of the pilot. Asked what the word

“research” means to their specific every-
day operations of their companies, most
reflect that, as a term, it is broadly irrele-
vant. And yet research itself is so relevant
to these teams that companies will pivot
their entire product or market in a week-
end if testing reveals imperfect market fit
or slow user uptake. The applied context
of this design research was so relevant
that 100% of Emily Carr researchers were
offered positions at their host companies
at the end of the pilot. ®

REFERENCES

[)] Gothelf, Jeff. Lean ux: Applying Lean Principles to

improve User Experience. Sebastopol: O’Reilly
Media, 2073.

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