Design Research Maturity in Five Questions
Based on conversations I’ve been having lately, there is a strong desire for a Design Research¹ Maturity Model similar to the UX² Maturity Model floating around.
I think the framing of discipline maturity in discrete stepped stages that apply to all organizations no matter what their mission or model is an unhelpful oversimplification that leads to a lot of self-congratulatory box ticking.
The overarching Capability Maturity Model is yet another unexamined frame we’ve inherited from the Department of Defense. Maybe not as pervasive and pernicious as so-called “hard skills” and “soft skills”, but worth questioning.
Because anything worth doing is worth questioning to verify whether it’s actually worth doing.
So, for individuals in organizations that truly wish to evaluate their potential for continuous improvement in the discipline of inquiry for the purpose of product and system design, I propose these five probing questions. (I’ll eventually figure out some sort of festive pentagram to visually represent progress along each axis and what it means.)
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