Research for Designers: A Guide to Methods and Practice

"Today, designers design services, processes and organizations; craft skills no longer suffice. We need to discover, define and solve problems based upon evidence. We need to demonstrate the validity of our claims. We need a guide to design research that can educate students and be a reference for professionals. And here it is: a masterful book for 21st century designers."

--Don Norman, Professor and Director of Design Lab, University of California San Diego, and former Vice President, Advanced Technologies, Apple

Design is everywhere: it influences how we live, what we wear, how we communicate, what we buy, and how we behave. In order for designers to design for the real world, defining strategies rather than just implementing them, they need to learn how to understand and solve complex, intricate, and often unexpected problems. This book is a guide to this new creative process. With this book in hand, students of design will:

• understand and apply the vocabulary and strategies of research methods
• learn how to adapt themselves to unfamiliar situations
• develop techniques for collaborating with non-designers
• find and use facts from diverse sources in order to prove or disprove their ideas
• make informed decisions in a systematic and insightful way
• use research tools to find new and unexpected design solutions

Research for Designers is an essential toolkit for a design education and a must-have for every design student who is getting ready to tackle their own research.