Design Research

To me, Design Research plays a big role in all my design activities, because it's very helpful for:

  • Discovering: design research helps me to discover more about my design objectives.
  • Guiding: it guides me, in a sense, while I'm doing design. Bearing usability principles in mind benefits the design result.
  • Testing: conducting proper research during design process is quite helpful for getting insights and feedback.

In general, I conduct Design Research (both qualitative and quantitative) mainly in those 3 parts:

1.  Exploring the context and seeking inspiration

PHOTO: Megalodon game design interview
PHOTO: History Treasure's secondary research results
PHOTO: Elizabeth Forward School visit for better knowing users' daily routine. Project Torqueit! for DARPA
IMAGES: "Extremes and mainstreams" research for Project Mobile Assistant for Pregnancy

2.  Analyzing and synthesizing research findings

IMAGE: Personas research in project RoadBots.
IMAGE: Card sort in project RoadBots for grouping and distilling info into design insights.
IMAGE: Journey map of scientific inquires for Darpa project
IMAGE: framework & workflow of bike rental experience in Project Boiok

3.  Integrate feedback and iterate

PHOTOS: Paper prototyping in Project History Treasure
PHOTO: Storyboarding for Mobile Assistant for Pregnancy in the interaction design class at CMU
PHOTO: Role playing in the class to explore tangible ideas
PHOTO: PHOTO: Business model canvas made in EET program
PHOTOS: A number of play testing we took for project Megalodon at EA.