research & design

a very heated and fantastic discussion on UX-Discuss in early December that I'm just getting around to finishing on the role of research in design.

random bits I liked from the perspective of being an IxDer:

• research comes before design and informs it, it is not part of design
• research and design are separate, interdependent tasks
• research can help to increase the confidence of a design but there may not be time in a project to do enough research. designers oftentimes have to rely on their own knowledge and experiences, parts of which may have come from past research tasks.
• research may be tied to a specific project in mind or it could be relevant to future projects
• one person may perform both roles or it may be separate people

Lada Gorlenko provided quotes from a report titled Innovation through people-centred design - lessons from the USA on integrating designers into the research process:

A powerful mechanism used in research is integrating designers in fieldwork. Being able to observe first hand, rather than reading findings, [...] can have an enlightening effect on the design team. The observation notes made by designers are often different, but complementary, to those made by ethnographers, as both disciplines absorb different events. These corresponding points of view can help to enrich the team's understanding of people for design and can lead to more effective translation of insights into solutions.