Design Research for Innovators

When you have an existing product or service then research techniques and methodologies already exist to gather and analyze information about it, to start planning the next version and future improvements. Building up a data collection and then analyzing existing users and systems through market research tools and surveys, as well as focus groups will yield a lot of great data to wade through to help incrementally improve existing designs.

However, if you are starting a new product or service that no one has ever seen before or had the opportunity to use, what methods can you use in this situation? There is not always something to test against and people cannot have accurate opinions about something they have never seen or used. Jane Fulton Suri chief creative officer at IDEO, suggests in her article about design research, that innovation requires a new approach to tackle the unknowns. Design research techniques can help in future thinking of new products and service insights. She explains that innovation is mostly open ended in its requirements and can be very subjective in nature. She suggest that what is required is what she calls "design research" opposed to more traditional research techniques, that still uses the analysis of objective evidence as before, but the research is enhanced with extra exploration due to the lack of applicable data. These include:

Synthesizing of evidence,

Exploration of analogies and extreme cases,

Recognition of emergent patterns,

Empathetic connection to people's motivations and behavior,

Intuitive interpretation of information with impressions from multiple sources.

These considerations are used to expose patterns with peoples behaviors and experiences, as well as, explore reactions and responses. The purpose of this research is to extend our knowledge and understanding. These allow the researcher direct efforts to probe and prototype against, which will more likely give key insight on unknowns through hypothesis and experimentation.

Design research's value is in inspiring our imaginations and inform our intuitions. Successful design research as Jane suggests requires both a cultural transformation in organizations and perpetuation of those transformations to allow innovation to survive and grow. Design research requires the individual to get out of the office and be where the customer is and see what they see. It is important to get first hand experience out in the field. Design research can be rich and delivers not only facts, but insights into those facts and reasons behind them. She goes onto emphaize that people have needs, motivations, habits and perceptions that all need to be taken into account in new product and service design thinking. Good research should uncover these nuances and allow the experimenter to gauge their ideas against this knowledge.

She summarizes with three different approaches to design research that can address open questions with regards to innovation and how they can be performed and implemented.

Generative Design Research

This is an empathetic exercise, it is descriptive and factual but also speculative and interpretive. We are looking for emergent patterns, challenges and opportunities that can be address with innovation and design thinking. It can be performed by shadowing specific people and observing their behaviors. Having people keep diaries of moods and significant events. It is interactive and contextual and not based on self report or opinions. There is also room for more traditional market research, and trend information searching. The aim is to create a framework for thinking about the domain for innovation.

Evaluative/Formative

Learning feedback loops are useful here, with user input and consumer insight gained from using sketches, telling stories. Producing videos and prototypes can be very valuable here to help demonstrate the issues and try potential solutions. The aim is to tangibly represent an idea, probing and asking questions. It gives a chance to address questions and uncertainty as it occurs. It allows you to check peoples reactions and refine assumptions. Collaborative discovery and creation works well in this research method. Using prototyping techniques such as theater(bodystorming) and paper prototyping.

Predictive

How confidently can we predict success? Looking ahead to estimate the potential of an idea and the future opportunities that maybe be available. This requires more of a business mindset, and is a good skill to acquire, especially for designers. Looking for potential markets and determining viability of ideas. Running live experiments and having labs that run experiments online is good practice.

Sharks and the Availability Bias

Do deer or sharks kill more people a year? If you look into stories covered in the media or reports on the internet you would find all kinds of horror stories and tales of sharks attacks and fatalities. Certainly most people have a very rational and natural fear of this large tooth filled animal. Steven Spielberg film Jaws went a long way to a general fear of being in shark infested waters for swimmers and paddlers. It is fair to say that if you like me were asked this question you would probably answer that of course sharks are more dangerous and attack more people a year than humble docile deer. The truth is a little more surprising.

You would actually be wrong, in fact deer kill many more people every year in car accidents than sharks attacking swimmers. The poor shark has become the victim of our own imaginations. Although I would still prefer to stroke a deer than a shark, the truth tell us that the shark is persecuted by our beliefs and this can of course have negative consequences if making an important uninformed decision. If we are not properly informed the decision could well be the wrong one and have a consequence for the shark that is unjustified. So what might be happening here. Well it seems this is part of what is know in psychology as the Availability Bias.

Availability Bias is a cognitive bias that generally causes us to over estimate a probable outcome based on how recently or well a memory is stored in our brains. So in the instance of the shark comparison because they have such a strong mental image for us, heightened by the news stories, internet tales and films, we have a stronger belief that this animal is more likely to attack us and base our belief on how easily we recall the shark in our minds. This incorrect information is the result of the availability bias. This the same condition that makes people fear flying when in fact there are far more fatal car accidents. The recall of the information is more likely to be based on how often and when we last heard of a similar event.

This bias can also affect how you approach a problem or business decision. You might jump to conclusion based on opinion and subjective information. The information you use may also be subject to this bias. Care must be taken when making assumptions about consumers and users of products. Without the real data or study of the target people it is too easy to make sweeping statements based on incorrect information. You might for example make a decision based on assumptions about the users preferences that are general opinion rather than fact. Do girls always like pink rather than blue? Do Apple consumers really hate Microsoft? Yes the media paints these pictures but that doesn't make them absolutely true, I am sure that some people buy Apple iPhones, but use Windows PC's at work, or there are girls out there that actually hate pink. The point being made here is that the availability bias can creep into product and service design as well as business decision very easily if the choice is made based on opinion rather than facts, or testing. We shouldn't rely on our most recent memory of this in the news or the last time we saw this product in use or use as the standard opinion of a small group of people. It is important to not allow this bias to cause us to make the wrong decision, as it can be quite incorrect.

Of course this says a lot about how we rely on the news, opinions, ratings and stories of others to inform our decisions. This is why we should be aware and careful the next time we jump to a conclusion without a little more research into the truth.

Design Thinking

Design thinking is an alternative way of thinking about problem solving and idea generation. It could well be one of the most important new ways of structuring new business teams and creating environments for future workers that has been put forward in recent years. The concept is not really anything new, and certainly many historical figures like Edison, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Tesla, would be in my mind classed as design thinkers. Really the newest step forward is the more formal acceptance of the process of design thinking as promoted by companies such as IDEO that produces reproducible successful results. Most people in the realm of invention and idea creation really have been practicing design thinking for centuries.

Design thinking is a really a process in approaching a problem. The basic four steps of design thinking are: 

Define the problem

Create and consider possibilities

Refine and dissect results

Repeat(optional)

Execute most successful outcome

Within each of these steps are tools and methods that help get the most out of the process. 

Defining the problem, involves a discovery phase with analysis of the problem space. At this point in the process it is critical to immerse oneself in the problem, existing solutions (if any), and the all the available resources and literature. It may also require observation of people and processes already in place. Only after a full discovery would it be worth moving onto a creation phase. At this point in the process it is worth considering tools like brainstorming on smaller parts of the problem, grouping and ideating ideas together to be evaluated as worth pursuing. Which leads nicely into to a complimentary part of the phase of creating prototypes of various levels of fidelity. To test out concepts and encourage team engagement at the early production stage. This is when things begin to really stand out as feasible and worthwhile solutions or not. Then, comes the refine and dissection of those ideas that seem most worthy. Further prototyping, and maybe some usability tests can help refine the results. repeating earlier stages may also prove advantageous. After things seem to funneling into a particular result it then becomes time to execute the most successful outcome into the final product or service.

That in a nutshell is design thinking. Again nothing completely new but really people's acceptance and corporate push for innovation has brought these now more well defined steps into new consideration. They are effective and powerful ways to generate ideas and produce prototypes that lead to more successful end products and services, when done correctly.

Other breakdowns of the steps include.

Discover, Analysis, Ideation, Prototype and Evaluate.

Define, Research, Ideate, Prototype, Choose, Implement, Learn.

In each instance you can see the common form of four basic steps.

I have some further reading here for design thinking.

You can read some more of my thoughts on prototyping here.

And some ideas on idea generation here.

So you want to brainstorm

Brainstorming is a fundamental part of any design thinking process. It helps people to think about innovation. I have been involved in many design brainstorms throughout my career, and some proved amazingly effective and a few were not as good as everyone had hoped. In the years that I have been brainstorming I have instinctively found what works and what doesn't and find that now things move along way smoother now than they did when I first started using this technique. Brainstorming is not a magic bullet to creative problem solving, and certainly it is powerful if used in the right way and for the right problems, but like anything if used incorrectly or with the wrong intention and approach it can be less than effective. The best time to use brainstorming is when the team is already saturated with a concept or idea space - from the discovery phase - then the team can effectively start to ideate with a clear mind on the problem space and maybe even existing solutions that can add to the mix. Without proper preparation by the team as a whole and individually brainstorms can be too wild and end up with too much on the "cutting room floor" because of a lack of understanding of the real problem space. It is important to have a facilitator that "owns" the problem and can guide and prepare the brainstorming session, I suggest where possible to invite a diverse team of people that would work well together, and are experts within their fields of expertise, but whom are open to problem solving outside their comfort space of knowledge. Diversity of backgrounds often leads to radical thinking about a problem from a new angle.

So that said, lets look at the rules for brainstorming that are defined and I agree work best in a good brainstorming session.

The first thing to realize is that there are some well defined rules for an effective brainstorm session and although I didn't define these rules, I do now apply them in all session I hold, they have proven to be very effective and produce the best results.

The rules of effective brainstorming are:

1. Defer Judgement. 
- Get the ideas out, evaulate the real value and feasibility later, it will only hinder the session if you keep stopping to evaluate ideas, plus it can be quite a show stopper when people start feeling like their ideas are being scutinized, they will tend to clam up and stop sharing thoughts.

2. Encourage Wild Ideas 
- Sometimes it is great to start the session off with a game related to the problem space, that makes people think about the topic and experience at hand. Then when the ideas start coming keep them loose and fun. Wild ideas can sometimes be great insights to why problem already exist, asking the question "why not?" can be very effective way to see the problem space.

3. Build on the Ideas of others 
- Sometimes following a path of thought by someone else can get your mind to shift the problem space you are in from your point of view. You might have been sitting thinking something very perfectly in your mind, but having to stop that and work from another point of view can free your mind from being trapped in "group thinking"

4. Stay focused on topic 
- Always note on a whiteboard or large piece of paper, the actual question or problem you are trying to solve, brainstorms often can get wild and people get excited about all the ideas and creative thinking, but actually forget the real task at hand.

5. One conversation at a time 
- Allow everyone to have their say, even if you don't think it is a good idea, or is wrong. Remember the first rule of brainstorming - defer judgement. Learn to listen to people on the brainstorm team someone might just have something very valuable to add to the idea pool. Nothing is worse than too many conversations at a time, and missing great ideas because no-one heard it or captured it.

6. Be visual 
- Putting things down in a visual form gets the brain excited and stimulated, remember we are mostly visual creatures, this helps whiteboards to not be a jumble of just text it produces a visula remind to ideas already discussed.

7. Headline 
- Some people are very capable of talking and describing ideas that make sense to them but no one else, or they take 15 mins to get the idea across, encouraging headline summary of an idea helps to be focused on the concept and solution, plus make the originator of the idea think a little more clearly about the concept in a bite sized chunk. Remember deep diving and investigation into any concepts will occur later, just make a note for now.

7. Go for quantity 
- This is more about the idea of encouraging people to produce ideas rapidly, not be too judgmental early on. Of course hopefully as more ideas start appearing on the walls, more ideas start to form. I have never had a problem with quantity of ideas, once people start they often get really into idea generation.

So there you have it the rough guide to brainstorming. Some of the best meetings you'll ever have if you follow these rules and have fun doing it.