Why Teaching Research To Designers Is Now More Important Than Ever

By Gjoko Muratovski

Author of “Research for Designers: A Guide to Methods and Practice”

Recently, I wrote an article for Forbes magazine on why we need better design thinking. The short answer to this question is that designers, traditionally, were not paying much attention to research as a way to inform their work. As a result, the products and the services that they were designing were often self-serving and egocentric. If we take into account that designers are expected to design for people other than themselves, then we can see where the problem was.

Things are different now, and more and more designers are versed in research methods – albeit at a various degree and with varied success. While this is certainly an improvement from the time when design was just considered a form of applied art (as was the case when I was a design student), the time in which we live today warrants us to raise the bar much higher than ever before. With the discipline of design becoming increasingly “human-centric”, designers are now expected to behave more like social scientists than artists.

Needless to say, we now live in a brave new world – and the reference to Aldous Huxley’s dystopian social science fiction novel of the same name is intentional. We are experiencing events and situations that at the beginning of 2020 we could not even imagine, let alone predict. Now, at the beginning of 2021, many of the things that we knew or come to expect, no longer apply. For the most part, we all feel like unwilling participants in some strange psychology experiment that has gone awry. The social constructs and patterns of human behaviour to which we were so accustomed have changed in ways that we don’t quite understand yet. To deal with this situation, we need to adapt, and we need to learn and unlearn things that we used to take for granted.

In many ways, this means that we need to generate new knowledge, and the only way to do this well is by conducting empirical research. But critical thinking derived from such a research process is not enough. We also need creative thinking in order to translate our findings and insights into practical solutions. This is where designers trained in evidence-based research can help.

Being a designer today means working in far more demanding environments than ever before. Interdisciplinary empirical research often allows designers to put aside their own personal biases, beliefs and preconceptions. It also allows them to see the world from other perspectives and to imagine solutions that are relevant, sustainable, meaningful and appropriate. But most important of all, it teaches them how to delve into the unknown in a pursuit for new answers and solutions. This is why teaching designers how to conduct research is very important.

As I have pointed out in my Forbes article, designers who use research to inform their work are much better equipped to provide real solutions to real problems. If they learn how to frame complex problems, ask the right questions, and co-create solutions while working with real people, then every crisis can become a new moment of opportunity. Knowing how to study people, their behaviours, and the socio-cultural-economic factors that define them will become a critical new skill for the next generation of designers. And there are many other skills that designers can develop by learning how to do research. For example, understanding the fundamental principles of ethics, while demonstrating responsibility and accountability for their actions should also define their way of work. This will ensure that the impact of their work will not be harmful or detrimental in the long term neither to us, nor the environment – as we have certainly had enough of that already.

The hard reality is that today we need design scientists more than we need design thinkers. This is why teaching research to designers is now more important than ever.

Book Details
Research for Designers A Guide to Methods and Practice
Gjoko Muratovski
December 2015
ISBN: 9781446275146

About the author