Sketches for “Personal Greenhouse” ©2007 Dan Soltzberg
Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge have posted their article, Design Meets Research, over at Gain: AIGA Journal of Design & Business. The piece provides a quick overview of various tools in the research toolbox, calls out their particular strengths and drawbacks, and makes the point that picking the right tool for the job and using it well are paramount.
Here are a couple of quotes from the article and some of my thoughts in response:
There are a wide variety of research techniques that can have merit for designers. . . There is not, repeat not, one correct way to test design.
I see research very much as a generative tool as well as an evaluative one, and have started to question whether the concept of a border between research and design is really accurate or productive. At the front end of the design process, research is a way of surfacing opportunities and generating ideas. At later stages, it’s a way of refining and validating these ideas as they become concepts and prototypes. In this way, research is a design tool in the same way that drawing is a design tool, except that at the center of the mechanism is the customer/user.
When used correctly, research shouldn’t stifle creativity but rather offer designers stronger inspiration and focus.
By taking a facilitative, collaborative approach to working with companies and design teams, research and research findings can be integrated into the design process in ways that enhance rather than stifle creativity. Keeping the customer/user and their needs prominent throughout the design process needn’t be limiting–having clear goals and constraints ultimately makes a design problem more interesting and leads to better, more elegant solutions.
And better, more elegant solutions are, after all, the end game here.
Tags: AIGA, customers, debbie millman, design, design process, design research, Gain: AIGA Journal of Design and Business, market research, Mike Bainbridge, research, tools, user centered
[...] Dan Soltzberg’s got a bulls-eye post around Gain’s Design Meets Research, where Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge provide a tight primer to, well, design and research. But something Dan wrote in his post really resonated with me: I see research very much as a generative tool as well as an evaluative one, and have started to question whether the concept of a border between research and design is really accurate or productive. At the front end of the design process, research is a way of surfacing opportunities and generating ideas. At later stages, it’s a way of refining and validating these ideas as they become concepts and prototypes. In this way, research is a design tool in the same way that drawing is a design tool, except that at the center of the mechanism is the customer/user. [...]
Pingback by Design Research: Dan Soltzberg on Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge 02.27.08 @ 7:55 amResearch is incredibly important in developing concepts, whether for ideation and its various sources, to feasibility (technical, commercial/objective, financial) analysis, and crafting a design strategy that builds the right product concept within a operationally efficient development plan.
Like you said, the scope and objective of research changes through the entire lifecycle. It’s in understanding the purpose of these development stages, that design researchers can apply appropriate tools and methodologies they feel are best for their situation.
Comment by Mario Vellandi 03.03.08 @ 11:41 pmAs Debbie and Mike said in their article, it’s about picking the right tool for the job at hand. And at a macro level, when you look at the core concept of design research–deliberately looking outward for ideas and validation, rather than primarily looking inward–it’s pretty clear that research is a fundamental and powerful design tool.
Comment by Dan Soltzberg 03.04.08 @ 1:34 pm
[...] Design Research: Dan Soltzberg on Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge. Dan Soltzberg’s got a bulls-eye post around Gain’s Design Meets Research, where Debbie Millman and Mike Bainbridge provide a tight primer to, well, design and research. But something Dan wrote in his post really resonated with me: I see research very much as a generative tool as well as an evaluative one, and have started to question whether the concept of a border between research and design is really accurate or productive. At the front end of the design process, research is a way of surfacing opportunities and generating ideas. At later stages, it’s a way of refining and validating these ideas as they become concepts and prototypes. In this way, research is a design tool in the same way that drawing is a design tool, except that at the center of the mechanism is the customer/user. [...]
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