Why do designers care so much about research?
- Because research is design. You cannot design without researching. If you do, you’re just drawing pictures.
- Because research is broadly denigrated. It’s economically undervalued and ignored once it’s released.
- Because research shifts the balance of power from stakeholders to customers. That can be threatening to many people who wish to hoard their power!
Appearing to “overvalue” research is a compensatory move against buyers who fail to understand why they are buying design, or what design even is in the first place. They read the Tim Brown book, look at old Steve Jobs keynotes, and think design happens in their heads.
It doesn’t.
This week, for paid members
- This week’s paid lesson teaches you the right way to test filter order. Sounds small, but is in fact load-bearing for large-SKU stores!
- Our design of the week presents the only menu item to ever make me laugh.
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Links
- When Jared Spool talks, you should probably listen. His belief that users should be specific and named goes against the received wisdom that fake “personas” are useful for value-based design work. They aren’t.
- On the one hand, product matters, not process. On the other, how do you make anything if not for process? More on the tension.
- Since I came up in enterprise agency land, I tend to build densely. This article provides a useful reminder that density is measurable and not always helpful.
- Where do you put the secondary button?
- Design research isn’t overrated because it’s overused. It’s overrated because it is structurally denigrated, which requires greater volume in order to correctly center its fundamental primacy in the role of design.
- Review images in the main gallery: good idea?
- War is over if you want it.