What I'm Up To

Research wall from Camp Boomer, a three-term research project on Baby Boomers entering retirement, by Laura Dye and Heather Emerson, back when they were my students.

I'm two-thirds through with my MSID in design research at Art Center, and I feel the need to take stock of where I am. I've been teaching design research to product design students at Art Center since 1991, but since my journey down the path of getting this additional degree I have been traveling over some interesting ground. Here's an update.

My goal is to be able to teach product design students how to do credible and effective qualitative design research. Most product designers are at first focused on the methods, like we would be on any set of tools. Give me the tools, and I'll use 'em. I think this comes from how we learn the design process. It is a standard sequence—investigation, problem definition, ideation, concept generation, concept refinement, final design specification. We learn it by doing it, over and over. We expect that any problem can be solved by the application of this process, and for the most part this is true.

The investigation stage, however, has its own set of tools (methods), borrowed from science, psychology, anthropology, etc., and there is no standard set that applies to all situations. It is important to know not only the methods that are out there, but also the rationale behind their application. And nobody has a complete list. For example, Brenda Laurel’s Design Research cites 36; the Design and Emotion Society’s Methods and Tools web site describes 57 (not all research—some of those are analysis); and IDEO outlines 36 research and 15 analysis tools in their Method Cards. After reviewing these and other sources and allowing for duplication, I have found 52 distinct techniques for research and 18 for analysis (and I've only begun to compile a list of those).

Many design firms' initial experience with research is via the hiring of a specialist. They observe the process that that person uses for a particular investigation and assume that that is "the process," (it's as if they think that, like design itself, design research has a universal process applicable to all situations). Some offices then polish up that process, giving it a catchy name and graphic veneer, and add it to the list of their firm's capabilities as a branded form of research, much like they began to offer engineering capability in the 80s. It's a way of making their firms more marketable. In the competitive environment of today's consulting offices, this is understandable and necessary.

The problem is that the research approach should differ depending on the issues under investigation. Good research takes into consideration the entire palette of methods available and chooses the right set to uncover the necessary knowledge in each situation. It's vitally important, then, to understand the rationale behind each choice.

And above all it is important that designers understand that qualitative research is not merely a kit of tools, it is an approach. At its heart is an immutable demand: to understand and have empathy with the point of view of all customers and stakeholders in a situation. In order to gain this understanding one must make smart decisions about which methodologies to employ. [I use the term methodology to mean the tool, or method, plus the rationale behind using it.]

So my goal is twofold: first, to acquaint my students with at least a basic set of methods, and second, to enable them to understand why, and in which situations, a particular one would be effective.

I continue to teach my course the way I've done it since 1991: using the time-honored project-based learning we're accustomed to—learning by doing. The students engage in fourteen weeks of field research and analysis (in some cases, more than one term's worth, as in Laura Dye and Heather Emerson's Camp Boomer project, above), culminating in a research presentation. They choose the topic and I advise them on approaches that would be effective. The problem with this is that the students, like the consulting firms I describe earlier, often come away from the experience thinking that there is one way to do research.

To remedy this I have added a theoretical component that teaches the wider range of methods and their accompanying rationales. A survey of the methods is followed by learning the principles behind their application via the case study method. The cases are written specifically to teach design research, and each case centers on important axioms. Much like the case study method pioneered by the Harvard Business School, the cases provide opportunities for students to engage in discussions centered on the decision process involved. Instead of discussions about management theory, the cases I am writing focus on the decisions necessary for planning research activities. A range of cases allow students to act out the planning process—and choose approaches—for research that would apply to a variety of design problems.

So far, I've got that long list of methods and am working on descriptions of each of them (broken down into: a brief description, an example, the objective, the procedure, the rationale, advantages and limitations, and citations of references where one could go for more examples, papers by those who have used the approach, etc).

I've got a few simple cases that I have used to teach basic axioms, and am working on some larger ones with research specialists from a couple of well-known firms. Both are excited about my doing this work, and although it's a tall order to flesh these out, it will be worth it.

While I started out like many product designers, focusing on finding "the right kit of tools," I have come to realize that the so-called tools are only a means to an end. What really matters is how smart you are at analyzing what you get from using them, and figuring out what it means.

This Is Brilliant

You can accuse me of living under a rock because I haven't seen one of these before, but this is absolutely brilliant. I just bought a new contact grill and take a look at the plug on the cord set. For all of you designers out there who bemoan the "stupidity" of consumers, how they won't follow directions, bla bla bla, take note of this simple design solution. 

The problem is as old as electric products themselves. People grab the cord rather than the plug to unplug an appliance, eventually ruining the cord. 

The conventional solution: warn people not to do this. Put it in the instruction manual. Get irritated at them and call them stupid for ignoring this warning.

The brilliant solution: Breville's designers designed the plug with a convenient hole to hook a finger into. Yes, I know there are plugs with flanges that provide good affordances for pulling. My Dyson has one of these:

Sure, either of these affordances could be ignored, but the shape of the Breville plug, top, invites us to use it in the way the designers intend. It's a message from the designer: "Here's something helpful. I'm thinking of you."

Moral of the story. Design things to accommodate what your customer actually does, rather than what you think they should do. Give, in a spirit of generosity. Remember Eva Zeisel and her message to us: Design is a gift across time from the one who made it to the one who receives it.

Stroller Theory, Revisited

Well, so much for my Unified Stroller Theory (previous post). Like I tell my students, Strauss and Howe's pronouncements about generational types don't account for individual variations.

Stroller Theory

I was talking to my colleague Steve Montgomery today about my Unified Stroller Theory (it's not really unified, but I think theories sound better if called that, don't you?). The theory goes like this: I think the generational demographics outlined in Strauss and Howe's Generations: A History of America's Future, 1584 to 2069 and expanded on in The Fourth Turning—that is, that societal attitudes about children and the degree of nurturance they receive have swung from casual to protective—are reflected in baby stroller design from the 60s to today.

In the late 60s-early 70s, you saw minimal strollers like the first Maclaren, above—no protection for the kid, all about convenience for the parent--because that generation of parents had a casual attitude toward parenting. Entitled beneficiaries of the post-WWII economic boom, this generation of parents carried childhood self-centeredness into adulthood. They seemed to view their lives and goals as central, with kids added. The kids were pretty much part of whatever the parents were doing. I can remember one of my young college professors who had a small child. Like many young adults at the time who were busy "finding themselves," she continued her work as a painter and teacher, and didn't skip a beat—the kid went wherever she did. I remember seeing her one day, forging her way across a busy city street, thrusting that baby carriage out in front of her as she raced across, mid-block. I can still picture that red Maclaren B-01 in my mind's eye.

 

Even the jogging stroller (especially the jogging stroller) fits the theory. The inventor, journalist and jogger Phil Baechler, wanted to spend more time with his son, but instead of dropping everything to do that, he built a stroller that allowed him to bring the boy along with what he would be doing anyway. No judgement here on the quality of parenting—just observing that in these examples, the kid is included in the parent's life, rather than the parent's life being solely centered on the child. What I see today is a less easy-going and casual, and more intensely focused, style.

The 60s and 70s saw the rise in dual-income couples, the resulting phenomenon of latchkey kids, and the generation we have come to call Gen X—one that has gotten a very bad rap from the rest of us (much of the time undeserved, I might add). As these children grew up into risk-taking young people with a live-fast, die-young worldview, the indictment of them by society was severe. Portrayals of children in movies like Rosemary's Baby and The Omen reveal uneasiness, or at best, ambivalence. The worsening trend of lack of nurture continued until we became fed up with what we perceived as the "slacker" generation that resulted. 

 

These days, we see a complete turnaround. Movies like Home Alone portray the kinds of kids we want to raise today—smart, resourceful, and assertive. 

In the 90s, many of our kids began to go to school in uniforms. Education became a top political priority (in the 70s it was something that we lost focus on). Strollers began to be bulky, protective, and padded—the SUVs of the sidewalk—telegraphing the message that kids are precious cargo. 

 

Most recently, kids are the focus of increasingly intense nurturing attention, and strollers have risen to cult objects that now telegraph this amped-up emotion. Considering our growing uncertainty in the face of perilous times, it's not surprising that our protectiveness is on steroids. The same obsession that goes toward Vuitton bags is now spent on outfitting our child with the latest. With a product like the Orbit, you are not buying a stroller, you are buying a system. We're even seeing a reprise of the old-fashioned pram (nostalgia is the last refuge of those enduring turbulent times). 

I. Can't. WAIT!

I don't know why it's taken us so long to begin to talk about getting high speed rail into California, but it's well past time. It's a no-brainer, especially now with the post-9/11 airport security measures making door-to-door between Los Angeles and San Francisco a tossup between taking a plane and driving there.... The route between Sacramento and San Diego has been approved, the environmental studies have been given the go-ahead, and it's now up to to voters to vote on a bond measure on the November ballot. Let's hope that the voters have the sense to say yes. Check out the web site. There are some wonderful quicktime animations. If you download them, they come up as full-screen movies. The station view, above, is particularly nice at that size.