Methods of Design Inquiry

Statistically compare different designs.

Activities, Environments, Interactions, Objects, and Users.

Visually cluster observations and insights from research.

Examine an object to understand how material, aesthetic, and interaction affect physical, social, and cultural contexts.

Statistical collection of user behavior to identify usability painpoints and enhancements.

Looking backward in time from an assumed set of circumstances in a future time, to better understand what could lead there, in order to explore appropriate intervention.

The intentional use of design to influence people’s behavior, translating insights from different disciplines into design techniques applicable to interfaces, products, services, and environments.

Behavioral mapping is used to systematically document location-based observations of human activity, using annotated maps, plans, video, or time-lapse photography.

Tactics to remove hinderances to problem solving and broaden creative thinking.

Bodystorming situates brainstorming in physical experience, combining role-playing and simulation to inspire new ideas and empathic, spontaneous prototyping.

Beyond creating lists of new ideas and concepts, brainstorm graphic organizers help in the creation of new knowledge by visually structuring a deep dive into a problem space.

Discussions about well-known brands and products to help create a shared vision about a new product experience before the design process begins.

A method to prioritize a data set using a target diagram.

Business origami enables teams to paper-prototype the interaction and value exchange among people, artifacts, and environments in a multichannel system.

When user comprehension and meaningful categorization is critical, card sorting can help clarify.

The case study is a research strategy involving in-depth investigation of single events or instances in context, using multiple sources of research evidence.

The promotion of new forms of grassroots citizen engagement in community and nonprofits, and design practice within public or government institutions.

Cognitive mapping is a visualization of how people make sense of a particular problem space. It is most effective when used to structure complex problems and to inform decision making.

Cognitive walkthrough is a method that evaluates whether the order of cues and prompts in a system reflect the way people cognitively process tasks and anticipate “next steps” of a system.

As inspiration for design teams, collage allows participants to visually express their thoughts, feelings, desires, and other aspects of their life that are difficult to articulate using traditional means.

Competitive testing is the process of conducting research to evaluate the usability and learnability of your competitors’ products.

Concept mapping is a visual framework that allows designers to absorb new concepts into an existing understanding of a domain so that new meaning can be made.

Content analysis is the systematic description of form and content of written, spoken, or visual materials expressed in themes, patterns, and counted occurrences of words, phrases, images, or concepts.

A content inventory tells you what your content is. A content audit makes recommendations as to what your content should be.

Contextual design is a customer-centered process that makes the ways in which designers work concrete, explicit, and sharable so that every step is anchored in customer data and feels less like design “magic.”

Contextual inquiry is an immersive, contextual method of observing and interviewing that reveals underlying (and invisible) work structure.

A visual structure that helps generate a wide range of ideas at the intersections of various categories.

Creative toolkits are collections of physical elements conveniently organized for participatory modeling, visualization, or creative play by users, to inform and inspire design and business teams.

Understanding how users experience your product at critical moments can help you optimize your designs for future users.

A central mechanism to advance the design process, inviting constructive feedback on concepts from teachers, clients, stakeholders, or peers.

Crowdsourcing occurs when an undefined, large group of people (a “crowd”) voluntarily responds to an open call and completes tasks and microprojects.

Cultural probes are provocative instruments given to participants to inspire new forms of self-understanding and communication about their lives, environments, thoughts, and interactions.

Customer experience audits capture the day-to-day context in which people engage with your product or service.

Physical modeling to enable data and relationships to be visualized, experienced, and understood in new ways.

The visual presentation of data to aid the discovery of important relationships among content and inform meaningful narratives that move people through information.

When superior design features and characteristics inspire subsequent rounds of ideas, the end result is more likely to be an optimized design solution.

Design ethnography approximates the immersion methods of traditional ethnography, to deeply experience and understand the user’s world for design empathy and insight.

Design fiction is the creation and use of real-seeming hypothetical objects, and other media, to explore imaginary narratives and contexts.

Design workshops are a form of participatory design consolidating creative co-design methods into organized sessions for several participants to work with design team members.

When there is disagreement about which design direction to pursue, desirability testing shifts the conversation from which design is “best” to which design elicits the optimal emotional response from users.

Diaries or journals are guiding artifacts that allow people to conveniently and expressively convey personal details about their daily life and events to design teams.

Directed storytelling allows designers to easily gather rich stories of lived experiences from participants, using thoughtful prompts and guiding and framing questions in conversation.

“Eli Toolbox” after design researcher and professor Eli Blevis. The Elito method is used to develop solid design arguments grounded in research observations and anchored to business directives.

A collaborative template that design teams can populate with user information to gain deeper insights into their customers.

Ergonomic analysis provides an assessment of tools, equipment, devices, workstations, workplaces, or environments, to optimize the fit, safety, and comfort of use by people.

Evaluative research involves the testing of prototypes, products, or interfaces by real potential users of a system in design development.

Evidence-based Design is an approach that bases decisions for effective design on the implications of credible research and assessed outcomes, rather than sole reliance on intuition and anecdotal information.

Experience prototyping facilitates active participation in design through subjective engagement with a prototype system or service, product, or place.

Experience sampling allows the designer to collect snapshots of behaviors, interactions, thoughts, or feelings from people who self-report in real time when signaled at random or timed intervals.

Experiments measure the effect that an action has on a situation by demonstrating a causal relationship or determining conclusively that one thing is the result of another.

Exploratory research is defined by user and product studies, intended to forge an empathic knowledge base, particularly when designers may be working in unfamiliar territory.

Eyetracking gathers detailed technical information on exactly where and for how long participants are looking—and not looking—when using an interface or interacting with products.

Given a component kit of parts, users can provide insight into product or interface configurations as guiding information for designers.

Fly-on-the-wall observation allows the researcher to unobtrusively gather information by looking and listening without direct participation or interference with the people or behaviors being observed.

The dynamic created by a small group of well-chosen people, when guided by a skilled moderator, can provide deep insight into themes, patterns, and trends.

An approach aimed at creating effective learning experiences by effectively aligning problems and goals, highlighting design opportunities, and informing the ideation process.

Generative design exercises engage users in creative opportunities to express their feelings, dreams, needs, and desires, resulting in rich information for concept development.

Graffiti walls provide an open canvas on which participants can freely offer their written or visual comments about an environment or system, directly in the context of use.

An agreed-upon set of usability best practices can help detect usability problems before actual users are brought in to further evaluate an interface.

Short, curated videos that feature key pieces of participant feedback that can be easily shared with stakeholders and teams.

A set of research approaches for seeking signs of potential change to come in one’s operating environment.

To encourage the healthy exploration of ideas and potential concepts, start problem statements with “How might we…”

A collage of collected pictures, illustrations, or brand imagery can be used to visually communicate an essential description of targeted aesthetics, style, audience, context, or other aspects of design intent.

A charting mechanism for teams to reach consensus on design priorities and feature decisions according to value propositions.

Interviews are a fundamental research method for direct contact with participants, to collect firsthand personal accounts of experience, opinions, attitudes, and perceptions.

Developed in the 1960s by Jiro Kawakita, a Japanese anthropologist. One of the seven management and planning tools used in Total Quality Control. When the traditional meeting format fails to achieve group consensus, the KJ Technique can be used to help teams work through a problem space and prioritize what should be focused on first.

Not all product attributes are equally important to the customer. Use Kano Analysis to determine which product attributes have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction.

When you need to keep a pulse on critical success factors for your product or service, a few well-selected KPIs can keep you informed and guide you when you need to course-correct.

A series of “Why…” questions used during interviewing to reveal the connection between a product’s obvious physical characteristics and the deeper, more profound personal values that it reinforces in a customer’s life.

Literature reviews are an integral part of academic papers, but are also a useful component of any design project, to collect and synthesize research on a given topic.

A personal letter written to a product often reveals profound insights about what people value and expect from the objects in their everyday lives.

People tend to behave in ways consistent with dearly held beliefs. The mental model diagram can help you articulate root causes behind behaviors and develop solutions that deeply resonate with people.

Designers can use metaphors to investigate how people understand concepts, help them understand in new ways, and generate new ideas.

When a topic or a problem has many moving parts, mind mapping provides a method of visually organizing a problem space in order to better understand it.

A fundamental research skill, observation requires attentive looking and systematic recording of phenomena—including people, artifacts, environments, events, behaviors and interactions.

Simultaneously exploring multiple design opportunities can help teams keep from fixating on a design direction too early, improve the nature of design critiques, and lead to more effective design results.

Participant observation is an immersive, ethnographic method for understanding situations and behaviors through the experience of membership participation in an activity, context, culture, or subculture.

PAR is a cyclical, collaborative research process that seeks to intentionally change the community or other aspects that are the focus of the inquiry

Participatory design is a human-centered approach advocating active user and stakeholder engagement throughout all phases of the research and design process, including co-design activities.

Personal inventories allow the designer to see and understand the relevance of objects in a user’s life from the participant’s point of view, to inspire design themes and insight.

Personas consolidate archetypal descriptions of user behavior patterns into representative profiles, to humanize design focus, test scenarios, and aid design communication.

Photo studies invite the participant to photo-document aspects of his or her life and interactions, providing the designer with visual, self-reported insights into user behaviors and priorities.

Picture cards contain images and words that help people think about and tell true stories of their life experiences, grounded in context and detail.

Questionnaires are survey instruments designed for collecting self-report information from people about their characteristics, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, behaviors, or attitudes, typically in written form.

RITE is a powerful formative usability inspection method that helps teams identify and remove major problems in an interface early in the design process before costly prototypes are built.

Remotely observing users completing tasks on their own electronic devices can reveal rich insights into contexts of use that cannot be replicated in a controlled lab environment.

Research through design recognizes the design process as a legitimate research activity, examining the tools and processes of design thinking and making within the design project, bridging theory and building knowledge to enhance design practices.

Acting the role of the user in realistic scenarios can forge a deep sense of empathy and highlight challenges, presenting opportunities that can be met by design.

A method used to identify elements of a design system that are working well, working poorly, and emerging as possibilities yet to be explored.

A scenario is a narrative that explores the future use of a product from a user’s point of view, helping design teams reason about its place in a person’s day-to-day life.

Secondary research consists of information collected and synthesized from existing data, rather than original material sourced through primary research with participants.

Semantic differentials can help reveal “felt” meanings that are a direct product of one’s experiences, culture, and dearly held beliefs.

A visual representation allowing the designer and co-creators to share a bird’s-eye view of an existing or proposed service.

A contextual and temporal systems approach for understanding, envisioning, planning and regulating services by engaging in co-creative processes with stakeholders.

Shadowing provides key insight into a participant’s activities and decision patterns as the researcher follows him or her closely throughout his or her daily routines.

Simulation exercises are deep approximations of human or environmental conditions, designed to forge an immersive, empathic sense of real-life user experiences.

Analyzing the words and phrases entered into a site search gives organizations insight into what people are looking for, which is an opportunity to evaluate how well site content meets those needs.

When people compare multiple design concepts in quick succession, design teams can learn how people react to new technology while also taking into account existing contextual and social factors.

Stakeholder maps help to visually consolidate and communicate the key constituents of a design project, setting the stage for user-centered research and design development.

Stakeholder walkthroughs bring end users, stakeholders, and the design team together to evaluate early prototypes, providing actionable recommendations for improvements and building empathy.

Storyboards provide a visual narrative that generates empathy and communicates the context in which a technology or form factor will be used.

Surveys are a method of collecting self-reported information from people about their characteristics, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, behaviors, or attitudes.

Swimlanes are deliverables that visualize the activities of multiple actors in a flow of events and prove that a holistic perspective is greater than the sum of its parts.

Task analysis breaks down the constituent elements of a user’s work flow, including actions and interactions, system response, and environmental context.

Territory maps are visual artifacts that represent the shared focus of the design team for anticipated design activities, including the identification of suggested stakeholders.

Building a thematic network is a step-by-step process that helps to identify, organize, and connect the most common themes in rich, qualitative data.

Think-aloud protocol is a method that requires participants to verbalize what they are doing and thinking as they complete a task, revealing aspects of an interface that delight, confuse, and frustrate.

Intercepting people at the precise moment they choose to complete a task provides keen insight into how they accomplish self-directed goals.

The guided tour is designed as a conversation that uses artifacts and the environment as touchstones for questions and insights.

Design for systems-level change, addressing large scale problems to catalyze societal transitions toward more sustainable and desirable futures.

A test of the organization and discoverability of content on a site by evaluating a text-based structure rather than a fully developed user interface.

Triading is an interviewing technique that reveals deep-seated attitudes, perceptions, and feelings toward brands, products, and services.

Triangulation is the convergence of multiple methods on the same research question, to corroborate evidence from several different angles

Unobtrusive methods are used to acquire information without direct contact with participants, through nonreactive physical traces, archives, and observations.

The usability report is informed by empirical evidence, helping teams decide whether a product is usable enough to release, or needs revision and further testing with more participants.

Usability testing focuses on people and their tasks, and seeks empirical evidence about how to improve the usability of an interface.

A user journey map is a visualization of the experiences people have when interacting with a product or service, so that each moment can be individually evaluated and improved.

Value opportunity analysis maps the extent to which a product’s aspirational qualities align to people’s idealized lifestyle or fantasy version of themselves.

An exploratory interview technique that structures discussion of “preference” by assessing concepts based on participants values.

Web analytics are a gateway for your organization to become deeply invested in what your customers are doing online, and why.

Once your team has generated multiple design concepts, a weighted matrix can help identify and prioritize the most promising opportunities.

In the Wizard of Oz technique, a researcher (the "wizard") simulates system responses from behind the scenes, while a participant engages with a system that appears to be real.

Word clouds are a method of information visualization that organizes text-based content into interesting spatial arrangements.