Research Tools For Design

"Universal Methods of Design is an immensely useful survey of research and design methods used by today's top practitioners, and will serve as a crucial reference for any designer grappling with really big problems. This book has a place on every designer's bookshelf, including yours!" —David Sherwin, Principal Designer at frog and author of Creative Workshop: 80 Challenges to Sharpen Your Design Skills "Universal Methods of Design is a landmark method book for the field of design. This tidy text compiles and summarizes 100 of the most widely applicable and effective methods of design—research, analysis, and ideation—the methods that every graduate of a design program should know, and every professional designer should employ. Methods are concisely presented, accompanied by information about the origin of the technique, key research supporting the method, and visual examples. Want to know about Card Sorting, or the Elito Method? What about Think-Aloud Protocols? This book has them all and more in readily digestible form. The authors have taken away our excuse for not using the right method for the job, and in so doing have elevated its readers and the field of design. UMOD is an essential resource for designers of all levels and specializations, and should be one of the go-to reference tools found in every designer’s toolbox." —William Lidwell, author of Universal Principles of Design, Lecturer of Industrial Design, University of Houston This comprehensive reference provides a thorough and critical presentation of 100 research methods, synthesis/analysis techniques, and research deliverables for human centered design, delivered in a concise and accessible format perfect for designers, educators, and students. Whether research is already an integral part of a practice or curriculum, or whether it has been unfortunately avoided due to perceived limitations of time, knowledge, or resources, Universal Methods of Design serves as an invaluable compendium of methods that can be easily referenced and utilized by cross-disciplinary teams in nearly any design project. This essential guide: - Dismantles the myth that user research methods are complicated, expensive, and time-consuming - Creates a shared meaning for cross-disciplinary design teams - Illustrates methods with compelling visualizations and case studies - Characterizes each method at a glance - Indicates when methods are best employed to help prioritize appropriate design research strategies Universal Methods of Design distills each method down to its most powerful essence, in a format that will help design teams select and implement the most credible research methods best suited to their design culture within the constraints of their projects.

How the tools of design research can involve designers more directly with objects, products and services they design; from human-centered research methods to formal experimentation, process models, and application to real world design problems. The tools of design research, writes Brenda Laurel, will allow designers "to claim and direct the power of their profession." Often neglected in the various curricula of design schools, the new models of design research described in this book help designers to investigate people, form, and process in ways that can make their work more potent and more delightful. "At the very least," Peter Lunenfeld writes in the preface, "design research saves us from reinventing the wheel. At its best, a lively research methodology can reinvigorate the passion that so often fades after designers join the profession." The goal of the book is to introduce designers to the many research tools that can be used to inform design as well as to ideas about how and when to deploy them effectively. The chapter authors come from diverse institutions and enterprises, including Stanford University, MIT, Intel, Maxis, Studio Anybody, Sweden's HUMlab, and Big Blue Dot. Each has something to say about how designers make themselves better at what they do through research, and illustrates it with real world examples—case studies, anecdotes, and images. Topics of this multi-voice conversation include qualitative and quantitative methods, performance ethnography and design improvisation, trend research, cultural diversity, formal and structural research practice, tactical discussions of design research process, and case studies drawn from areas as unique as computer games, museum information systems, and movies. Interspersed throughout the book are one-page "demos," snapshots of the design research experience. Design Research charts the paths from research methods to research findings to design principles to design results and demonstrates the transformation of theory into a richly satisfying and more reliably successful practice.

The publication proposes a critical reading of the results emerging from the Seminar organised in January 2010 by the Department of Architectural and Design Technology on research tools for the architectural project. The spatial layout of buildings and urban spaces influences behaviour and the relations of the users, and in this displays the social nature of the architectural function in comparison to other spheres of design. Space Syntax (theory, methodology and techniques for the analysis of complex systems) takes this theory as the basis for its research. The seminar, attended by leading academic and professional figures, offered the opportunity for exchange between its own research and the experiences carried forward by the Space Syntax research and consultancy group.

Think Like a UX Researcher will challenge your preconceptions about user experience (UX) research and encourage you to think beyond the obvious. You’ll discover how to plan and conduct UX research, analyze data, persuade teams to take action on the results and build a career in UX. The book will help you take a more strategic view of product design so you can focus on optimizing the user’s experience. UX Researchers, Designers, Project Managers, Scrum Masters, Business Analysts and Marketing Managers will find tools, inspiration and ideas to rejuvenate their thinking, inspire their team and improve their craft. In this newly revised Second Edition, the authors have added six new essays that look at how UX research methods have changed in the last few years, why remote methods should not be the only tools you use, what to do about difficult test participants, how to improve your survey questions, how to identify user goals when you can’t directly observe users and how understanding your own epistemological bias will help you become a more persuasive UX researcher. Key Features Provides a dive-in-anywhere book that offers practical advice and topical examples. Includes thought triggers, exercises and scenarios to test your knowledge of UX research. Features workshop ideas to build a development team’s UX maturity. Discusses war stories from seasoned researchers to show you how UX research methods can be tailored to your own organization.

How can you establish a customer-centric culture in an organization? This is the first comprehensive book on how to actually do service design to improve the quality and the interaction between service providers and customers. You'll learn specific facilitation guidelines on how to run workshops, perform all of the main service design methods, implement concepts in reality, and embed service design successfully in an organization. Great customer experience needs a common language across disciplines to break down silos within an organization. This book provides a consistent model for accomplishing this and offers hands-on descriptions of every single step, tool, and method used. You'll be able to focus on your customers and iteratively improve their experience. Move from theory to practice and build sustainable business success.

Showcasing exemplars of how various aspects of design research were successfully transitioned into and influenced, design practice, this book features chapters written by eminent international researchers and practitioners from industry on the Impact of Design Research on Industrial Practice. Chapters written by internationally acclaimed researchers of design analyse the findings (guidelines, methods and tools), technologies/products and educational approaches that have been transferred as tools, technologies and people to transform industrial practice of engineering design, whilst the chapters that are written by industrial practitioners describe their experience of how various tools, technologies and training impacted design practice. The main benefit of this book, for educators, researchers and practitioners in (engineering) design, will be access to a comprehensive coverage of case studies of successful transfer of outcomes of design research into practice; as well as guidelines and platforms for successful transfer of research into practice.

One key responsibility of product designers and UX practitioners is to conduct formal and informal research to clarify design decisions and business needs. But there’s often mystery around product research, with the feeling that you need to be a research Zen master to gather anything useful. Fact is, anyone can conduct product research. With this quick reference guide, you’ll learn a common language and set of tools to help you carry out research in an informed and productive manner. This book contains four sections, including a brief introduction to UX research, planning and preparation, facilitating research, and analysis and reporting. Each chapter includes a short exercise so you can quickly apply what you’ve learned. Learn what it takes to ask good research questions Know when to use quantitative and qualitative research methods Explore the logistics and details of coordinating a research session Use softer skills to make research seem natural to participants Learn tools and approaches to uncover meaning in your raw data Communicate your findings with a framework and structure

This book summarizes the results of Design Thinking Research carried out at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, USA and Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. The authors offer readers a closer look at Design Thinking with its processes of innovations and methods. The contents of the articles range from how to design ideas, methods and technologies via creativity experiments and wicked problem solutions, to creative collaboration in the real world and the connectivity of designers and engineers. But the topics go beyond this in their detailed exploration of design thinking and its use in IT systems engineering fields and even from a management perspective. The authors show how these methods and strategies work in companies, introduce new technologies and their functions and demonstrate how Design Thinking can influence as diverse a topic area as marriage. Furthermore, we see how special design thinking use functions in solving wicked problems in complex fields. Thinking and creating innovations are basically and inherently human – so is Design Thinking. Due to this, Design Thinking is not only a factual matter or a result of special courses nor of being gifted or trained: it’s a way of dealing with our environment and improving techniques, technologies and life.