Design Implications

All the design research in the world is useless unless designers lay out the implications of the research. It's astounding how often this crucial step is overlooked.

At the end of any research period, designers will have an unstructured mass of data: in notes, in pictures, and in their heads. All this data is, frankly, useless (and perhaps worse than useless: overwhelming and confusing) unless it is distilled into information that the designer can use. The designer has to give shape and meaning to the datathat is, design the data.

The first task is to put all this data into some sort of order: in a spreadsheet, in a table, even (or especially) on sticky notes all over a giant board (Figure 4.5). The designer needs to cluster the data in meaningful ways, to give it form, so it can be thought about. One approach is to make a conceptual model of the data (see Chapter 5), but even looking at the data laid out in any sort of way should be enough for the designer to begin to draw design implications from it.

Figure 4.5. After gathering data, the next step is to cluster that data into meaningful chunks.

Let's say a designer is researching a new watch that sends and receives e-mail. As part of her research, she observed and recorded the moments when people most often glanced at their watches. In looking over her data, she discovers that the people she observed looked at their watches most often when they were late and in a hurry. What is the design implication of this data? Well, one implication might be that users first and foremost need to see the time on a watch/e-mail device, since they are usually glancing at the device in times of stress. Users also might like a device built to detect faster movement (hurrying) so as not to distract the wearer with incoming e-mail until the wearer slows down.

Or here's another example: A designer has been interviewing stereo aficionados about how they use their stereo systems. He finds that a large number of them are jazz aficionados as well. One design implication is that any new stereo system should be optimized for playing jazz, or have an option that allows such optimization.

Some of the design implications the designer will draw out of the data may seem simplistic ("The new mobile phone should fit in a pocket or purse"), but later in the process, these implications can offer a good check on what is being designed. Does the new product or service address all the design implications from the research?