What we need from research is more than description, and especially, more than a list of “needs,” explicit or implicit, met or unmet. We need a way to explicitly articulate the values that inform those decisions, and a basis on which to do so.
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Rick Robinson at IIT Design Research Conference 2010 on Vimeo
I’m just now catching up on this years’ recent DRC, which I sadly missed for no really good reason. Always a sucker for the antics of an agent provocateur, I was immediately drawn to Robinson’s presentation based on a photo of the tee shirt he was wearing that read: “Against user needs since 1989.”
I had to take a deeper dive into his perspective to see if it hit on any of my own questions about the current (or at least, prevalent) approaches to design research, particularly the orientation toward discovering “unmet needs.”
In my own project experience, I’ve often felt a sort of split personality as both a design researcher and as a sociologist, and the dichotomy is most pronounced in the on-again, off-again relationship between needs/behaviors and goals/motivations.
So then I have to ask myself: is the general goal of any real research pursuit to propose solutions or is it to propose new ways of thinking, seeing and doing? If it’s the former, then I suppose focusing design research on existing and unmet user needs is really just business as usual. If, however, it’s the latter, as Robinson and maybe little ol’ me (and a growing number of other influential experience design thinkers and doers) believe, then we’re going to have to rally for commitment and investment in deeply immersive and participatory design research if we want to drive real innovation, not just the loosely-stated, bandied-about idea of “innovation”.
And here’s the thing- what will ultimately reconcile the sociologist’s understanding of values and motivations with the designer’s focus on goals and needs will be a renewed and shared ambition to affect behavior change, rather than simply modification or adaptation.
