In October 2009, Professor Simon Bolton, Director of the Centre for Competitive Creative Design in Cranfield University, wrote about how design research is linked directly to the growing importance of design in the business world.

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Introduction


Steven Kyffin, of Philips Design, advocates that the value of design research lies in its capacity to help 
draw concrete insights and conclusions from which to develop innovation roadmaps. 
The emphasis of this article is on understanding the importance of design research within the design 
process, in particular product design.

Context and Evolution of Design Research 


Design research emerged as a recognised field of study in the 1960's led by practitioners such as John 
Christopher Jones and Bruce Archer. Design research can be described in two distinct ways: (1) 
undertaking research into the design process with the intention of improving its effectiveness and 
performance and (2) undertaking research within the process of design with the aim of enhancing 
creativity, problem solving and or design-decision making. 


Since the 1960's the scope and nature of design research has been continually expanded and today it is 
becoming more integral to all forms of communication, product and service design. Design research related 
activities are continually expanding and today encompass a wide range of research activities such as:



The increasing interest in the use of design research is linked directly to the growing importance of 
design to business success. Many organisations are starting to clearly understand the need to use design to achieve and sustain success. This message is being positively reinforced by design and design-thinking champions such as Tim Brown (IDEO) and Bruce Nussbaum (Business Week) who are constantly promoting the benefits of design and design-thinking in the business arena. This awareness has resulted in organisations wanting to deploy design and design-thinking but has highlighted the need for assurances that the ideas that they seek to design and develop are relevant and demanded by the 
market place. This need for assurance and the ability to verify a range of hard (demand) and soft 
(aesthetics) innovation issues is creating a potential window of opportunity for the strategic use of design driven by design research activities.



Design research I predict will be a prerequisite front-end business related activity within the next 3 . 5 
years for many medium and large organisations and more and more small businesses will seek external input. The reason for this assertion is that the context in which businesses, and subsequently design, operate in is becoming increasingly dynamic. Market globalisation is forcing businesses and designers to design for unfamiliar consumers and markets; the ever increasing rate of technological change is driving the introduction of new technologies where past experiences are often no longer relevant, changing beliefs and behaviours are impacting on functional and emotional lifestyle aspirations of consumers, and the increasing importance of socially responsible agendas are dramatically influencing consumer attitudes and behaviour to consumption. All these factors strengthen the need and case for design research activities.



In response to increasing need and potential demand for design research activities, the composition of 
design research teams will continue to evolve. Based in part on the multiple and interrelated business 
dynamics previously discussed, many organisations are developing global multi-disciplinary design 
research teams that bring together psychologists, industrial designers, materials experts and 
anthropologists. Multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural design research teams are helping organisations 
such as Nokia to explore and inform themselves of new and future trends in new and emerging markets.
For example the redesign of mobile phones and communication experiences in Africa need to be more 
suitable for phone sharing usage, as mobile phone ownership in Africa is more frequently shared at 
family, village or local retailer level.


Understanding cultural differences through design research

Teams in companies such as Samsung are using design research to help address changing consumer demands. Samsung's use of LED backlighting technology has in part been developed to address changing needs and desires. Samsung identified the increasing demand for eco-friendly products from consumers, particularly in the European market, for products with reduced energy consumption. The development of new LED technology has resulted in a 40% reduction in energy consumption compared to existing LCD TV's, enabling slimmer and lighter weight products to be designed resulting in an 
improved carbon foot print through the reduction in material usage and the ability to increase the 
number of units that can be transported.

Based on these observations and obvious business success stories, one would anticipate that the 
introduction and use of design research would be trouble-free. In many cases it is the opposite, too 
frequently businesses see design research as an unnecessary cost that cannot be justified. Anecdotal 
evidence points toward time to market pressures, cost of direct observation research and face to face 
contact with consumers being time consuming, particularly when addressing overseas markets. 
To reinforce the importance of design research, Cadbury's, the European chocolate manufacturer, had 
identified India as a potential growth market for their products. They initially thought that it would be 
able to select key global products and directly introduce them to the Indian market without significant 
design changes. This strategy proceeded to fail. Cadbury subsequently identified that Indian consumers 
were not prepared to pay for the cost of conventional chocolate bars, but were willing to pay about one 
cent for impulse confectionary. This meant rethinking the product concept. The distribution packs were 
redesigned to be broken down into smaller packs so that local retailers could afford to purchase them, 
who would then it turn would resell single impulse buy units to consumers. Cadbury established if 10% 
of population purchased the redesigned one cent product the sales would exceed $60 million dollars. 



Cadbury's entry to India markets

Maximising the Use of Design Research


Design research is a potential key activity for helping organisations strategically position their businesses and design activities. Consumer choice and product diversity help to explain in simple terms why design research is of importance to many businesses. The illustration below exemplifies the potential wide range of choices available from a simple starting point of selecting a juicer. Options range from functionally undifferentiated products, through to electrically powered items culminating in high-end niche designer products. Diversity and consumer choice mean in theory that there are potentially no right or wrong market positions. However success is based on developing the right strategy for the right market segment. Design research therefore has the capability, if done effectively, to play a key role in ensuring design strategies are positioned correctly by helping organisations understand key competitors strengths and weaknesses, technological and performance requirements, market characteristics, price point positioning, user profiles, functional and usability requirements, lifestyle aspirations and design trends. Failure in one or more of these areas can lead to a misalignment for example with the target audience and or market trends which can quickly lead to commercial failure.


Consumer choice and design diversity - "juicer"

Effective design research activities focuses on understanding both functional and emotional issues and is concerned with determining new insights that can directly inform creative thinking, stimulate idea 
generation, improve design decision-making and verifying strategic directions. Building in the voice of 
customer into the design research process, either directly or indirectly, is a key factor in facilitating 
success. The ability to collect data is not in essence the critical activity, although very important, it is the 
ability to decode visual and non-visual data and translate emergent issues into concrete insights that 
drives success. Effectiveness can be characterised by the research teams ability to translate identified 
functional and emotional characteristics into unique innovation drivers. Ineffective design research activities are often characterised by the presence of assumptive decisionmaking, lack of immersion into the consumer's world and undifferentiated innovation drivers. The core features of being a good design researcher can be attributed to having strong design awareness, systematic planning capabilities, strong listening skills, abstract pattern recognition capacities, open-mindedness and empathy. Great design researchers do all of the above but also have the ability to synthesise, externalise, visualise and communicate issues and narratives in compelling ways.

Central to design research activities is observational research, which focuses on understanding people in context. Observing people is at the heart of all good design research practices whether focusing on usability or lifestyle issues. At its best it is an immersive social research technique that involves direct observation of phenomena in situ, focusing on identifying emerging patterns and attempting to understand emergent issues through the eyes of the target users and the voice of the customer. Observing users in situ helps to contextualise lifestyle issues and gain a deep understanding of what a 
user is required to do in terms of specific actions and or cognitive processes to achieve a desired task.


Usability and lifestyle issues

Role of Design Research Frameworks in Delivering Success 


The dynamic and continually expanding nature of design research means that complexity can quickly 
emerge within the research activities due to the interrelationship between multiple issues, the volume 
and nature of data collected. Effective design research, particularly with reference to the product design 
process, requires research frameworks that encourage systematic approaches to structuring and managing data, but that do not prescribe and or restrict activities. Design research is iterative in nature 
and research frameworks should facilitate this characteristic, facilitating the ability to see emerging 
patterns within research data. The ability to externalise data is crucial to the design-led innovation 
process and effective design frameworks work best when data is visually externalised encouraging 
"creative connections", which are points were issues and opportunities collide to create new insights 
and or innovation drivers. Over the last ten years, having been involved with a range of major companies such as Procter and Gamble, LG Electronics, Panasonic, OKI, Reebok, the role of design research has become increasingly important and more and more organisations have sought to develop coherent design research tools and processes to drive their design-led innovation processes. During this period I have been actively involved in developing frameworks that focus on specific detailed issues through to complex integrated tools that explore competitors analysis, technological positioning, market characteristics, price point positioning, user profiles, functional and usability requirements, lifestyle aspirations and design trends. In reviewing the evolution of design research frameworks in professional and academic practice the key consistent elements driving those developments have related to developing frameworks and tools that have clearly defined process steps and matrix type data capture meshes that focus on context (environment and surrounding influences) and issues (subject[s] of concern). The development of design research frameworks reflect the design process, as their development is often iterative and evolutionary, driven by a test retest model where tools are often developed to explore specific design based issues, with the successful tools being either integrated to existing processes or morphed to create new hybrids through reflective practice.


Design research frameworks and processes

In most established design companies, particularly those involved in front end design activities, have 
developed and evolved practice based design research tools to support their design-based activities. 
Some key players such as IDEO have evolved design research into core business activities. With the 
growing importance of the role and use of design thinking in business and emergence of service design 
innovation, it will mean that design research frameworks, tools and processes will continue to rapidly 
develop in both complexity and range of the issues they can explore.

Encouraging Design Research in Korea Design 


Over the last four years I have been working with the Korean Institute of Design Promotion to increase awareness of the role of design research in helping designers to understand experience based design, international design trends, cultural differences and the impact of socially responsible design agendas.


The London Workshop in September (2009) focused on developing a new European 'eco' coffee drinking experience that identifies and delivers 'eco' benefits. The project focused on introducing the importance of design research to service design innovation. The five day workshop introduced participants to observational research, task analysis, user profiling, lifestyle aspiration analysis and trend scanning. The group was split into 3 teams. Each team were required to undertake location visits and trend scouting activities. The project involved four key steps of decoding the eco trends, observing the coffee drinking experience, understanding the user profile and developing an eco coffee drinking experience. The London Hoxton team created a user called Billy that represented the user profile characteristics of the Hoxton location. Each team were asked to create a short story to explain and communicate their eco coffee drinking experiences. What the workshop proved is that the next generation of design leaders in Korea have the willingness and capability to use design research to creatively drive Korean businesses. Our next challenge is to convince Korean business to support and invest in design research.

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This article was originally published by designdb magazine and has been republished with permission.

About Professor Simon Bolton

Professor Simon Bolton, internationally acclaimed designer and innovation consultant, is Director of the Centre for Competitive Creative Design. His work has been exhibited in the Design Museum in London, the Axis Gallery in Tokyo and the Pompidou Centre in Paris among others. His work has been published in major design journals internationally in Europe, Asian and North America. Professor Bolton specialises in helping companies improve and develop their design capabilities and business performance. He has extensive experience of working in Europe, North America, South America and Asia for local and global brands.

About Korea Institute of Design Promotion

A standing member of Icsid, Korea Institute of Design Promotion (KIDP) was established by the Korean government in 1970 in an aim to promote the design industry and expand export. As a national government design organization, KIDP promotes Korea’s mid- to long-term design policies and engages in various exchange programs with countries around the globe. To meet the demands of the digital design era of the 21st century, KIDP particularly focuses on leading Korea’s economic development and enhancing the quality of life by promoting cutting-edge design industry.