The article "Research by design: Design-based research and the higher degree research student" (Kennedy-Clark, 2013) appeared in the "Journal of Learning Design" Volume 6, Issue 2 in 2013. Two years on, Shannon Kennedy-Clark reflects upon her original article. Upon being asked to revisit this article the author reflected upon how much research has been done on design-based research as a methodology. So, in this response, she will draw upon some of the main ideas that are coming from recent studies and consider this in the context of Higher Degree Research (HDR). When the author was first introduced to design-based research, it was the methodological approach being used in a grant-funded research project at the Centre for Computer Supported Learning and Cognition (CoCo Lab) at the University of Sydney, Australia, where they were building an educational virtual world that was based on Harvard's River City. At the time, most of the literature on design-based research was grounded firmly in the learning sciences and came from leading researchers in the field, such as Barab and Squire's (2004) seminal text and from research groups such as the Design-Based Research Collective (2003). As the author's PhD was in this field, the approach seemed to provide more opportunities to improve her understanding of the study than other, perhaps more traditional, approaches. It also seemed relevant as design research is a methodological response to address issues in education rather than being drawn across from other research domains. The article as it appeared in 2013 is also presented. With the author's approval, minor edits have been made and the referencing updated to APA 6.0. [For "Research by Design: Design-Based Research and the Higher Degree Research student," see EJ1018597.]