New Ideals for Design Research

Now that I’ve presented a review of the Design Research Conference 2010 (DRC) to our internal creative team, I’m feeling energized. There are many changes happening right now in the field of Design Research and I’m excited to be a part of it. I’ve made my presentation available on Slide Share.

Beyond User Insights
The conference started off with a provocative bang. Don Norman presented the keynote and argued that user needs are only going to deliver incremental innovation. Norman lauded Verganti’s theories of Design-Driven Innovation (also the title of his book), which he said could only occur through technology and meaning shifts – not design research. This controversial point of view was then elaborated on by Rick Robinson of E-Lab. Robinson agreed that “user needs” are not in the position within the process to have enough of an impact. Both Norman and Robinson were deliberately controversial in making their points. However, something lost in the rhetoric was their overall point that user needs are important to consider (they are even the baseline), but they aren’t “enough” to have much of an impact without being connected to something else. The broader context of their points seemed to be missing in blog postings that latched on to the juicier parts of their presentation. 

The larger combined insights from their presentations is that design researchers need to translate insights into tangible design recommendations since user insights are no longer a unique offering. During the conference, Norman mentioned frog design twice as an example of a firm that is doing great work in the area of research – because we do a good job of translating it into design and for our client organizations.

Our New Ideal: Behavior Change
Behavior Change has been a topic that frog’s VP of Creative, Robert Fabricant, has presented over the last couple of years in the context of healthcare and social innovation, most notably with frog’s Project Masiluleke.  During this conference, the concept was reinforced by Kevin Starr from the Mulago Foundation. He listed all the “Design Ingredients” that need to be included for a product to be successful.  Many products fail at the “behavior” step, meaning they are successfully marketed and distributed, but aren’t truly adopted by the intended end-user and are not used as the designer had intended.  Starr’s presentation really crystallized my understanding of designing for behavior.  I always thought of it as only healthcare-related. Now I see it as our new criteria for the success of every product. The ultimate measure of success is changing behavior not getting a product to market.

Like frog, Tim Brown at IDEO also advocated for behavior change as the new direction of design. Their stance is to create tools to help users solve their own problems via design, e.g., the HCI ToolKit.

Design Doing
Eric Wilmot’s presentation described the importance of “doing” to inform strategy. This is something that frog does really well. We build designs that make it into users’ hands. For others at the conference, this was more radical.  To Don Norman’s point, design can have a very significant impact through shifting meaning, but designers won’t know if it works until something is prototyped. The trend of launching Beta’s into the market is another corollary to this notion (e.g., Gmail has been in Beta for years).

Market Research is a “Dying” Field
Heather Fraser from the Rotman School of Management had an excellent talk on Design Research as a Platform. I loved her discussion of “little r to big R” meaning the field of “research” maturing to the field of “Research.” Shedding some perspective on the history of research, Fraser discussed her original field of market research, saying how design research is a sophisticated evolution of the field. Being somewhat cautionary, she also threw out the proposition that research is on a pendulum swing: formally called market research, it’s now called design research, and next it could be called something else…. So we shouldn’t get too comfortable!

In the breaks between talks, I had several very interesting discussions with some market researchers who were at the conference. Confirming everything that Fraser put forth, there was strong agreement that market research as a field is on its way out. Market research and design research use the same methods, but market research is an “FYI” type of research where design research is directed and has a tangible output. As a visible example, look to well-known market research companies like Cheskin who are now developing design offerings to remain competitive.

Heather Fraser also discussed how these changes are showing up in MBA programs. More programs are teaching design strategy, design process, and design thinking (e.g., CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy). Newly minted MBAs will speak the language of design and design research. This is another reason why market research is losing its importance.  The next generation will either think of strategy or design research for answers  - or a combination of both.

Image credit: Christopher Royer- Rick Robinson's provocation: "Against User Needs Since 1989" (cc)