- Research is not a new concept in design.
Historically designers of all disciplines
have learned to use research to better create
and craft their solutions.
I'd like to start our conversation
by looking at some historic examples
of research in the design profession.
The study of consumer bevahior
is probably one of the most common examples
of research in design.
It's been used ever since the early nineteen twenties
to study everything from the effectiveness of advetising
to the design and packaging of a product.
In the nineteen fifties, industrial designer
Henry Drefuss pioneered the concept of human center design,
declaring the users' needs and wants
as the main priority of a design process.
He created Joe and Josephine
to represent potential users that would
interact with the objects he designed.
Joe and Josephine embodied a culmination of research
that included everything from average body measurements
to personality trains and their likes and dislikes.
Dreyfuss and his design team
would use these fictitious models
to test whether they're designs would be successful.
He said of the pair in his influential book,
Designing for People,
"Our job is to make Joe and Josephine
"compatible with the environment."
The Bauhaus, the highly influential design school
that existed in Germany from nineteen nineteen
through nineteen thirty three
often required students to test finished
designs with real users.
The feedback they collected helped
to validate their solutions
and also inform future iterations of their work.
So, when we talk about design research
we're really talking about a research-driven
process that can help define how a problem is solved,
and communicate the value of the solution.
One of the reasons design research
is at the forefront of today's profession
is that contemporary design problems
have become increasingly complex.
Twenty years ago we might've been asked
to design a poster to promote an event
or a brochure to help sell a product.
Now, we're being asked to create a lifestyle
around a product.
Consider the iPhone and how advertising
alone has changed the way it impacts our lives.
So, as designers we need to not only
be experts in form but also experts
in how humans interact with what we create
and I'd like to share a quote with you
that I believe sums this up quite well.
"Lately, I've sensed that we're in a third phase
"of modern design, when I sometimes call its
"ethnographic turn.
"We've seen periods of great formal experimentation,
"exploding the visual vocabulary of modernism."
"We've seen periods focused on the
"meaning-making of design, its content, symbolism,
"and narrative potential.
"For me, this new phase
"is preoccupied with design's effects,
"beyond its status as an object,
"and beyond the authorship or intentions of designers."
Let's look at that last part one more time.
"For me, this new phase is preoccupied
"with design's effects, beyond its status as an object."
So, what this says is that we're thinking more
about the effects of the design
rather than the design itself
and when we shift our thinking to the effects
of our designs, our process needs to be
much more centered on the people
and the environments we're designing for.
We'll talk about context a lot
throughout this course.
Context is understanding everything
relevant to a design problem.
It's a general awareness of the user,
their needs, wants, and motivations.
And also their environment,
what it looks like, sounds like, feels like,
and more.
Understanding context allows designers
to take a critical look at what they're creating
and figure out whether or not
it'll generate the desired outcome.
I'd like to point you to our resource files
in our Exercise Files folder.
Here you'll find a great list of publications
that feature more about design research
and show the value it can add to a solution.
Take a look through them before moving on in this course.
They'll help you get a sense of the impact
research is making on design.