Keep it specific
State the decision
Explain what a result could change. “Understand the problem” becomes more useful when tied to a choice, an audience, and a setting.
Purpose & approach
Better connections.
More useful research.
A research network built around shared questions, clear methods, and knowledge that can move between contexts.
Our purpose
Create the conditions for better questions.
Research and innovation often meet at an awkward boundary: a finding is interesting, but its use is unclear; a practical problem is urgent, but the available evidence is incomplete. Research Exchange provides a common language for that boundary.
The network is organised around questions and methods. Its resources connect problem framing, exploratory project design, collaborative discussion, and clear reporting. Readers can follow a brief from its initial question through to a proposed test and a reflection on its limitations.
This is an open learning resource. The project pages describe exploratory briefs rather than funded programmes or completed studies. The publications are original explanatory notes, and the events section offers reusable workshop agendas.
Working principles
Clarity before confidence
Make it inspectable
Show the reasoning
Keep a record of observations, assumptions, and interpretation. Readers should be able to see where the evidence ends and judgement begins.
Make it reusable
Carry the context
Share enough detail to help others adapt the work. Include the conditions that might make a result different elsewhere.
A practical approach
Four moves that keep work focused
Frame a question
Describe the problem in ordinary language, identify who faces it, and decide what evidence would help.
Compare perspectives
Ask which methods offer different views of the question. Agree on definitions before comparing conclusions.
Try a bounded test
Choose a manageable activity, a realistic comparison, and an explicit point at which to pause or revise.
Share a useful account
Record the method, the observation, and the next decision. Keep unresolved questions visible rather than smoothing them away.
Use the network as a working library.
Read a brief, adapt an agenda, or take a canvas into a discussion with collaborators.