How does a software application idea become a research project?

As a software developer just starting out in research (working for a lab) I have this idea of a software application which is meant to target a specific need: specifically to help users query data using specific and novel methodologies (navigation languages and autocomplete methods).

Anyway, I know that ultimately I want to do science and not engineering. By that I mean that ultimately I don't want to build a tool (although it could help prove my idea) but that I want to investigate (that's really what research is about isn't it?) about how the navigational and autocomplete methodologies are important for querying data (for example)

So I'm a bit troubled wondering how I can transform this application idea into a more scientific research project. Should I look at the novel parts of the application (such as the autocomplete functionalities) and investigate how that might make querying better for users? Is that even research?

I guess overall I'm puzzled on how to make the idea of my software application stand on its own. How do I make my software idea contribute to the current body of human knowledge? Does software even count as knowledge? I guess I'm trying to convert the idea of my software application into a piece of knowledge. Any help/clarification?

Answer

Your software idea may be able to become a piece of research if you can come up with a few things:

• Research question. Ask a question relating to your software idea - for example, "How can we do X?" "What is a better design for X?" etc. Check the literature to see what has been said about this question (and related questions) by others.


• Research result. What is the actual, novel contribution of your work? Is it a new technique that hasn't been done before? A rule of thumb for designing certain kinds of applications? A much better way to do a certain kind of task (for some reasonable definition of "better")?


• Validation of research results. What kind of convincing evidence do you have that your result is sound? Depending on the type of result you claim, your evidence may be in the form of performance benchmarks of your technique relative to state of the art, user studies from users of your application, or something else entirely.

The best way to get a better understanding of what constitutes a research question, research result, or evidence, is to read a lot of papers in your field of interest.