Recap: Design Research at IDSA Northeast District Conference

While design research wasn't the overall theme at this past weekend's northeast district conference, it was certainly a prominent part of it.  On Saturday, Marty Gage spoke about the how to better communicate design research findings to designers - focusing on the essential transition between research findings and design solutions.  And research was wide-awake on sleepy Sunday.  We had our two-parter (panel/portfolio review)focusing on design research:

During the morning panel discussion, Art Swanson discussed the value of data visualization as a way of presenting information to clients.  Visualization, as opposed to analysis, presents data in an unfiltered, interactive manner to allow people to draw their own conclusions.  He suggested wefeelfine.organd gapminder.org as a couple of interesting examples of data visualization.

Sunmee Kim spoke next, focusing on the various aspects of a design research project at Motorola.  She finished by discussing an internal tool used by all of the design researchers around the world at Motorola to document and share data.

And Marty Gage appeared again, combining clear tactical advice with humor in discussing what should go into a design research portfolio.  It should be an extension of your design portfolio (if you have one), but is about meaning, not sexy imagery.

Following some great Q&A with the speakers, we had the first design research portfolio review, which was combined with the overall portfolio review (see photo above, courtesy of Core 77, and some more photos from that session).

My initial feedback on participating in the research portfolio review was that while there weren't many examples of detailed research projects to review,  it was useful to have professional researchers giving input to design students.  I'd love to hear feedback from other reviewers/reviewees, so please feel free to add your comments.

Comments

[M Marut]

I agree with your comment that "there weren't many examples of detailed research projects to review." However, from talking to some of the portfolio owners it became apparent that both primary (field) and secondary research had been conducted but not shown. Some had also conducted usability or other evaluations with prototypes. It would be great to encourage presenters to show more of the above in the portfolios. Also, I thought Marty Gage gave an excellent talk on how to show the upfront research. Is it possible to post his slides here?

[FRDiaz]

Hey Rob,
Sorry for the delay in this post, but I'm compelled to comment on my experience as a research portfolio reviewer...

While indeed few (if any that I saw) designers had strictly design research portfolios to show, there were some notable standouts that incorporated a research-esque process (prior to the concepting exercise) substantial enough to include with their design work.

The most successful ones were able to convey a compelling narrative--a visual expression of observed facts and their implications. I was looking for evidence of a well-structured thought process, the perseverance to re-test hypotheses and a natural, healthy curiosity. I wasn't surprised to find that the ones that stood out were able to relate and 'sell' their concepts clearly and concisely.