Research in the context of art and design is a much-debated and vexed subject. In some respects it is difficult to see the cause of this anxiety, as most art and design research is scientific, of the humanities, or technological and only troublesome, therefore, to the extent that research is seen as problematic in these disciplines. The debate becomes most intense when discussing what is sometimes called "practice-based research", and in particular when it is argued that art-making or design-making is research, and when the artefact is put forward as the goal of the research - the embodiment of new knowledge (cf. Frayling, 1993/94). The issues in this debate are political, conceptual and practical. Here, I approach the conceptual and practical issues from a personal point of view - that of my experience as a supervisor and examiner of PhD students. Recently, I have found myself confronting distinctive practical problems when supervising some PhD students (i.e., those where art- or design-making is central to their "research" programmes) which I have not been able to resolve through the application of accumulated experience of past research projects. Of course, this might simply reflect my own supervisory shortcomings. Nevertheless, I have come to the conclusion that the ways of research familiar to me cannot provide the answers I need. Some art- and design-making "research" projects are different in ways that require me to go beyond the ways of research with which I am familiar if I am to be a useful supervisor and fair examiner. In this paper, I explore these problems and discuss possible ways of dealing with them within an action process that emphasises reflection.