Digging into Design Research: Getting familiar with Desk Research

Design research is an interesting leg of the design process. As designers, we claim to be designing for ‘humans’, but how can we accurately do that without conductive extensive research beforehand?

As a new designer to the trade, I did what anyone would do and Googled ‘design research’, and I was met with the traditional Wikipedia entry:

“Design research was originally constituted as primarily research into the process of design, developing from work in design methods, but the concept has been expanded to include research embedded within the process of design, including work concerned with the context of designing and research-based design practice.” — Wikipedia.

Digger deeper into this topic, I found another popular opinion by a company at the forefront of design research. IDEO, international design and consulting firm, stresses the critical role design research plays in the whole design process. They define design researchers as people who “carefully investigate human experience and behavior, dream up new ways to spark and distill insight, and inspire teams and clients to address people’s needs through bold, optimistic design”.

Me when learning about design research for the first time.

I was excited to hear that we would be learning from another lead thinker in the design research field. Designer, strategist, and co-founder of Friends (a forward thinking design company based on collaboration), Miki Aso, would be joining us for three weeks from New York.

Miki will be spending three weeks with us to teach us the different methods of research and their values as well as applications. I am excited to use this time to tackle the different aspects of research hands-on.

Diving into Desk Research

Desk research refers to the study of secondary data which has already been collected. It normally refers to reading published reports and statistics to glean valuable insights from there regarding leads and the environment. In the design world, there are various ways to go about desk research:

1. Historical Research: this is rooted in looking at the past to learn of precedent, best practices, and influences that shape today.
2. Current Events: learning about current events and trends can give insight into the state of things right now.
3. Latest Thinking: look into who and what is shaping the space. Often startups or forward-thinkers are changing the status quo. Don’t forget to investigate the outliers or oponents.
4. Competitive Analysis: who are the other players in this space? A competitive analysis helps to find direct and indirect competitors, and to identify a space for entry.
5. Innovation: see what are the radical changes being made in the industry and how they reimagine the product or service.
6. Influences: be aware of the larger forces at play, such as age, minority, skills, health, demographics, access to technology etc.
7. Demographics: secondary data on your audience population that is important to take into consideration: age, gender, ethnicity, education level, location, socioeconomic status etc.

With all of these new research methods in mind — we needed a plan of attack.

What’s the plan? Attack!

As part of the design research class we were divided into teams and assigned a brief. My team comprises of five excellent members: Stavan Himal, Karina Papalezova, Yiwen Yan, Hiram Aragon and myself. We were assigned the following brief:

Beyond the traditional resume how might you represent who you are and create a post-resume future that better represents humans, skills, personality, etc.

Begin by understanding what the traditional resume contains, its role in the current application process, its value and limitations to employers and seekers, what employers from different industries are looking for when reviewing applications.

With this task in mind, we got together to start planning our plan of attack. One of the first things to do is to restate the brief, and we landed on the following:

The task is to reimagine how a person can represent themselves to a company to find the best fit and meaningful work.

Leaning on this, we could proceed. We brainstormed the main modes or mediums of representing one’s self to a potential employer: CV, resume, resume video, cover letter, portfolio, published papers, social media accounts, elevator pitch and business cards.

Based on this basic information, we began to ask ourselves a few questions like: What are different industry needs or standards in terms of representation? What channels are people using to represent themselves?How does the hiring process work? What is the job scene like in the future? And how can people best prepare for that?

In order to best answer these questions, we turned to our laptops and began to find the answers to these questions based on the different topics. We divided them up as such:

• The role and history of the traditional CV (Yiwen)
• Cultural behaviours and their impact on representation (Hiram, Soninke, Karina)
• What does future work and technology look like? (Stavan)
• Industry questions (Field research) * to be expanded on at a later stage.

With these goals in mind, it was time to go home and begin our research.

These were only some of the many questions that we as a team had. There were also a lot more complex topics that we touched on, such as what is the role of a culture behaviour and socio-economic background in representation. In a world with a widening technological divide, how can people without access to technology best represent themselves.

Then there is also the idea that we are studying and learning for jobs now, that do not exist yet. What would be the most valuable thing to showcase to a potential company or employer about yourself? Many say transferable skills are the way to go, as well as showing flexibility, adaptability, the eagerness to learn and the commitment to that company or work.

If we had to reimagine the world of work in the future — we would like to think of a society where everyone is working in a company that aligns with their values and where they can do meaningful work. It would be a world where people would work to support their lifestyle, not one where their lifestyle bends around their work.

But enough daydreaming, for now.