Audience Analysis | Defining your audience and their characteristics. |
Market Research | A broad term for research of customers and competitors. |
Client Interviews | Interviewing the client to discover expectations and recommendations. |
Customer Interviews | Interviewing the customer to discover their needs and the way that they use things. |
Throwaway Prototypes | Quick, inexpensive and safe prototypes. |
Proof of Concept | A test that some element of the design will work. |
Design Concept | Developing an artifact that communicates your ideas for a design. |
Concept Testing | Testing design concepts with customers/users/clients. |
Competitor Analysis | Evaluation of competing designs. |
Lead Users | Gaining the input of influential or advanced users. |
Experience Sampling | Using customer/user journals to find out how the design will be used. |
Needs Analysis | Identifying requirements for a design in terms of customer/user needs. |
Context of Use | Identifying how things are actually used in the real world. |
Critical Design | Experimental designs that provoke thought and challenge the status quo. |
Edge Cases | Uses of a design that are rare but can occur and need to be handled. |
Use Cases | Documenting uses of a design. |
Evolutionary Prototypes | Prototypes that reflect your vision for the state of the art that are refined over time. Often expensive. |
Problem Analysis | Investigating problems the design will solve. |
Brainstorming | Listing ideas without a filter. |
Reverse Brainstorming | Listing ways a design could fail. |
Exploratory Research | Researching existing knowledge and things that you will need for a design such as a brand style guide. |
Design Analysis | The end-to-end process of researching a design, planning a design and gaining feedback from stakeholders (e.g. clients). |
Constraints | Imposing constraints on the design. |
Assumptions | Documenting any assumptions upon which the design will be based. |
Experimentation | Trying things in a systematic way in order to collect data. |
Simulation | Mockups and other simulations of designs and design concepts. |
Speculative Design | Developing big design ideas without regard to constraints such as client requirements. |
| Overview: Design Research | ||
| Type | ||
| Definition | The creative and systematic investigation of problem spaces, customers, markets and possibilities in preparation for delivering a design. | |
| Related Concepts | ||
