Rikke B E Knutzen

The reason this isn’t a serious issue is because of the power of iterative design. We involve a small sample of participants in our research and make some design decisions based on the outcomes. Some of these decisions will be right and some will be wrong (false positives). But with iterative design, we don’t stop there. These decisions lead to a new set of hypotheses that we test, perhaps with field visits to users or by creating a prototype. In this second round of research we involve another small sample of participants — but crucially a different sample than before. This helps us identify the poor design decisions we made in earlier research sessions and reinforces the good decisions. We iterate and research again. Iterative design is the methodology that prevents us from making ser…

…y want from a new product or service. Although this seems like the correct way to do user research, in most cases users don’t know, don’t care or can’t articulate what they need. It is the design team’s job to establish the underlying problem, identify the best solution and then validate that their solution works. Design ethnography is the first step on that journey.

Design thinking should be central to the implementation of the Industrial Strategy, at both local and national levels. For the direction of the Grand Challenges it is particularly important. These are broad and complex…