Design Research – the fuel to design?

I recently attended Yahoo! Usability and User Research Conference in Seoul. It was an internal conference focused on methodologies and sharing amongst various international offices.

I have already known the value of research in design and this conference just concretized by belief and trust in design research. Any design process needs design decisions. Making the right decision is important to make your product/solution accurate. If you think closely how do we make these decisions?

These are based on our past experiences, our understanding of the users and mostly our ‘biases/assumptions’. I would say majority of our decision are based on what we think (read as ‘assume’) the user would want. Thus there is a lot of ambiguity and differences in what is need and what we assume is needed.

This is where the design research fills the gap. It becomes a bridge between the user and the designer. I personally feel any kind of design research has a lot to offer to designers. Even though they may not make an impact the top management; there is a huge value in day to day working of designers. As designers we should seek as many cue and clues what help us build a better understanding of the actual usage. The objective- reduce assumption and build concrete understanding. The less assumption we build on our design I feel the better designs we can deliver.

So I would suggest treat your design researchers very well. Treat them & give them gift because these are people who could really help you create better designs. And this not only helps you in a specific product/project. These understanding are going to stay with you for very long. This may have direct impact on current project but indirectly this is going to have significant impacts on products/project to come in future.