A Designer's Research Manual, 2nd edition, Updated and Expanded

Succeed in Design by Knowing Your Clients and Understanding What They Really Need

Jenn Visocky O'Grady, Ken Visocky O'Grady

• Publisher: Rockport Publishers
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781631592621, 9781592532575
• eBook ISBN: 9781631594304
• Topic: Design
• Subtopic: Design General

Good information gives designers a competitive advantage. Understanding the wishes of a client and the needs and preferences of their audience drives innovation. The ability to gather research, analyze findings, and apply them to project goals is as important to successful design teams as their conceptual and aesthetic skills. This essential handbook will help readers understand what design research is and why it is necessary, outline proven techniques and methods, and explain how to incorporate them into any creative process.
 
A Designer’s Research Manual was one of the first books to apply research practices to the benefit of visual communication designers. This long awaited second edition follows more than a decade of active use by practitioners, design educators, and students around the world. Comprehensively updated, A Designer's Research Manual second edition includes:

• Over 25 proven research strategies and tactics
• Added content about planning research, analyzing results, and integrating research into the design process
• Suggestions for scaling research for any project, timeline, or budget
• All new in-depth case studies from industry leaders, outlining strategy and impact
• Updated images, illustrations, and visualizations
• Quick Tips for rapid integration of research concepts into your practice

CHAPTER 1

AN OVERVIEW OF RESEARCH IN GRAPHIC DESIGN

Businesses recognize, now more than ever, how important design is to financial success. However, clients are often looking for assurances that their communication dollars will be spent wisely.

WHAT IS

RESEARCH-DRIVEN

DESIGN?

This chapter explores the concept of research-driven design, how it has been used in the past, where new opportunities exist, and how these practices generate value.

Graphic designers have long been taught that form, structure, and style are indispensable communication tools. Hours spent in the study of typographic principles, color theory, grid placement, shape relationships, and visual contrasts inform a designer’s aesthetic decisions. However, the demands placed on today’s visual communication designer are very different from those asked of yesterday’s commercial artist. As the design profession evolves, an increasingly competitive global marketplace expects measurable results for its creative dollars. Clients want assurance that designers understand their business issues and that commissioned work will deliver a return on their investment.

Incorporating research methods into the design process can aid in meeting this demand for a variety of reasons. Simply put, this approach redefines the designer/client relationship—and multiplies the creative and financial dividends for both. Research-driven design can help define an audience, support a concept, advocate for an aesthetic, or measure the effectiveness of a campaign. In a field dominated by subjectivity, tools such as market research, ethnographic study, and data analytics can be used to communicate better with a target audience, create more effective messages, or continually assess a project’s development. Applying traditional research methodology to the process of graphic design also positions the designer in a consultative role. Armed with this supporting evidence, the designer (often viewed as a vendor) instead becomes a strategic consultant (newly viewed as a business partner). Designers who base their commissions around the creation of artifacts encounter clear project end-dates, while those who provide strategic services continue billing on a retainer basis.

In chapter one we’ll introduce person-first design philosophies, exploring the importance of truly understanding the unique needs of the people for whom you’re designing. We’ll review some historical moments that helped define the role of research in design practice, because examining how the aligned fields of architecture, interior design, industrial design, and user experience design have successfully embraced research can help you learn how to apply the concepts to graphic design. We’ll end on some good news you can help spread, evidence of design’s connection to value generation and financial success.

WHAT RESEARCH CAN

AND CAN‘T DO

Research is essential to solving complicated problems. This is true in almost every profession; it’s even true in complex personal undertakings! Whether you’re charged with expanding your company into a new market, or selecting your next car, you can’t solve the problem if you don’t do your homework.

Research frames the problem. It provides context. It helps us get to know the people we’re designing for, and the issues we’re designing around: Who lives in this market? What distracts a new driver? We research to identify and understand needs, preferences, influences, motivations, habits. We’re looking for patterns. We’re seeking insight that will help us connect project goals to people. The extra work is worth doing because it places your user at the center of your design process. Research findings become a touchstone for ensuring that creative and aesthetic decisions are being made objectively. You’re lining up the work to resonate with your audience.

Research can also serve internally as a client communication tool. It can provide a platform for the client and designer to agree on project goals, scope, and audience. Findings can help outline concepts and support rationale with stakeholders and partners. Actively incorporating research into the design process makes the creative problem more transparent, helps win buy-in, and mitigates perceptions of risk.

Research can help provide focus, track progress, confirm success, measure impact… and sometimes it can tell you that you’ve missed your mark.

Research isn’t a guarantee. It’s important to understand that the practices covered in this book don’t automatically ensure success. While design research can be very technical and in-depth, it’s still primarily a qualitative—or subjective—activity. As designers, we undertake these activities to develop insights into problem and audience. We are not building evidence for a legal argument, there is no warranty on outcome, and we do not seek definitive proof. Research cannot guarantee—but it can predict and influence a project’s success. Ask the right questions, talk to the right constituents, and you will develop an understanding of central issues, a new empathy for the people you’re trying to reach.

Research doesn’t prescribe aesthetic. Creative decisions can be inspired by research findings—the creative process almost always benefits from more information—but research activities can’t create the work. Informed decisions—based on research in...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Introduction: Why This Book?
• Chapter 1: An Overview of Research in Graphic Design
• Chapter 2: Research Strategies+Tactics
• Chapter 3: Practicing a Research-Driven Approach
• Chapter 4: Project Spotlights
• Glossary of Terms
• Bibliography
• Credits
• Featured Practitioners
• Index
• About the Authors
• Dedication
• Copyright