Research for Designers
A Guide to Methods and Practice
- Gjoko Muratovski - Stanford University
Design is everywhere. It influences how we live, what we wear, how we communicate, what we buy, and how we behave.
To design for the real world and define strategies rather than just implement them, you need to learn how to understand and solve complex, intricate and often unexpected problems. Research for Designers is the guide to this new, evidence-based creative process for anyone doing research in Design Studies or looking to develop their design research skills.
The book:
- Takes an organized approach to walking you through the basics of research.
- Highlights the importance of data.
- Encourages you to think in a cross-disciplinary way.
Including interviews with 10 design experts from across the globe, this guide helps you put theory into practice and conduct successful design research.
Gjoko Muratovski makes an excellent case for how design research can help move design practice and education to the next level. Society has a growing need for comprehensive design thinking and his book, Research for Designers, makes the subject easy to understand for novices and also serves as an excellent reference and inspiration for experts.
There are few other research methods book for designers, and I will therefore adopt it in my course that introduces the topic for graphic designers. The book gives an overview of research methods, but it does not provide enough details and hands-on support for conducting research. It lacks detail, for example, on fundamental concepts such as validity (construct, internal, external, ecological) and reliability; data analysis methods (both qualitative and quantitative); and experiments. I also find it strange that UCD and UX are presented as quantitative approaches (they are not). With that said, the benefits of having a book that introduce research methods for this reader group outweigh the drawbacks.
The original was a really good book for designers which covers the basics of qualtitative research methods using relevant case studies and material in a design context. A welcome update to the original.
Although the text book is well written and covers key areas.
The contents therein will not be appreciated by my students
