[IxDA Discuss] Design research

[Dave Cronin]

Interesting.

I think I'd agree with you more, except it turns out that I can only recall working on a couple projects in the past 10 years that didn't meet most of Dan's qualifications for when research is necessary. And in those few cases (all simple consumer products), it's actually true that I didn't really feel like I needed research to come to solution.

(That said, I can remember the research we did as being incredibly useful in explanition design rationale to our clients.)

My take on the article is that in additional to trying to stir things up a bit (no harm there), Dan's making a point about the importance of intuition as part of the design process. While these are my words and not his, I'd agree that regardless of how much research one does, it still takes inventiveness and a good idea to create good designs. Research can't do that for you. (However, it does take a good understanding of usage context to figure out whether your ideas are correct-- whether you get that understanding from research, or you're already walking around with it in your head.)

And I will say that for the vast majority of our projects at Cooper, we'd be dead in the water without research. When you're designing for a sophisticated technical domain (like financial modeling or computer-assisted surgery), the best way to get booted up enough to be a clever designer is by spending time with potential users and subject matter experts.

-dave


-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com on behalf of Mark Schraad
Sent: Wed 5/9/2007 7:09 AM
To: discuss at lists.interactiondesigners.com
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Design research
 
I read this morning a column Dan Saffer wrote that is posted on the adaptive path web site. It caused me some concern.

http://www.adaptivepath.com/publications/essays/archives/000755.php

I am a huge proponent of design research, but I think it is all too often done poorly, and not done frequently enough. That said, I agree for the most part with what Dan says regarding many projects and many designers not needing research. What concerns me is the specificity of Dan's message and its audience. I have no data here... but I would surmise that many from the IxDA community get the context of this article and as such all is fine. Of concern is the portion of Dan's (my assumption here) growing audience that is in design school, just out of school and outside of the "designer as motivated learner" catagory. 

Did Dan just give designers with limited experience justification for blowing off research or testing? I am quite certain, that is not the intended message, but it is a concern. I guess I am not sure what the purpose of this article is. Experienced, confident designers with domain expertise and good sense of "hunch", likely don't need to be told that this is OK. They know. 

There is so much time and money wasted in product and service design. Business schools quote numbers of 70 - 80% of all new products fail. This is a horrible waste of resources. Surely... we can do better. One way to effectively improve the odds is to meaasure the intended audience or target market. Research is a great start at this. Even if the research confirms your hunches, it is likely worth the time.

Mark
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