Design Research: Methods and Perspectives (Hardcover)

~ Brenda Laurel (Editor), Peter Lunenfeld (Preface)

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . an indispensable resource for everyone in the field."
— I.D.

"...this is a book to turn your career inside out with serious examination and reflection."
— Book Bytes

"Bravo! This truly is a remarkable book about one of the most significant design practices of the 21st century. It will push and test your knowledge about the role and the value of design. A must-read if you are serious about redesigning the future."
-Clement Mok, Founder, Studio Archetype, and President, American Institute of Graphic Arts

"We live in perhaps the most overtly (and, possibly, overly) designed time in human history. Design touches us all, regardless of career, country, or social status. If you want to understand the impace of design on your everyday life, the ways in which design research can make you a more effective creator of designed artifacts, or the ways in which those artifacts can best be brought to consumers, the essays collected in Brenda Laurel's Design Research are a great place to start. Whether you make things, sell things, study things, or use things, Laurel's latest offers a unique and powerful historical, analytical, personal, and practical overview of this vital field."
-Warren Spector, Studio Director, Ion Storm

Product Description

The tools of design research, writes Brenda Laurel, will allow designers "to claim and direct the power of their profession." Often neglected in the various curricula of design schools, the new models of design research described in this book help designers to investigate people, form, and process in ways that can make their work more potent and more delightful. "At the very least," Peter Lunenfeld writes in the preface, "design research saves us from reinventing the wheel. At its best, a lively research methodology can reinvigorate the passion that so often fades after designers join the profession." The goal of the book is to introduce designers to the many research tools that can be used to inform design as well as to ideas about how and when to deploy them effectively. The chapter authors come from diverse institutions and enterprises, including Stanford University, MIT, Intel, Maxis, Studio Anybody, Sweden?s HUMlab, and Big Blue Dot. Each has something to say about how designers make themselves better at what they do through research, and illustrates it with real world examples--case studies, anecdotes, and images. Topics of this multi-voice conversation include qualitative and quantitative methods, performance ethnography and design improvisation, trend research, cultural diversity, formal and structural research practice, tactical discussions of design research process, and case studies drawn from areas as unique as computer games, museum information systems, and movies. Interspersed throughout the book are one-page "demos," snapshots of the design research experience. Design Research charts the paths from research methods to research findings to design principles to design results and demonstrates the transformation of theory into a richly satisfying and more reliably successful practice.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 334 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press (October 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262122634
• ISBN-13: 978-0262122634
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #249,715 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 49 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Beware, November 10, 2004

By	Professor Nigel Cross (UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Beware! This book has an attractive title for design researchers. I expected it to be a manual that might be useful, for example, to PhD students in design. But it is not. It is hugely disappointing. It has usurped the title `design research' for what is largely innovation management prattle.
It's a book for designers, not students. But I'm not sure what designers would get from it. Inspiration to engage more in user research? Perhaps. Encouragement to delve deeper into research methods, and to learn more? No; because the references and further reading are extremely limited. For instance, two potentially useful chapters, overviews of quantitative and qualitative methods respectively, have just one reference between them, and that's to Cooper's The Inmates are Running the Asylum, in the qualitative methods chapter.

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great browse, February 7, 2005

By	Software Researcher - See all my reviews

The varied opinions among the existing reviews suggests this is somehow a strange subject area. I can only report on my own response, and I think this is a cool book. Before thumbing through to the preface you'll encounter a neat symbol of good design - a two page spread of the what's in the book. A true "table of contents," whose rows represent various aspect of design research, and whose columns are the book chapters. Each table cell is marked if that chapter pertains to that aspect. Pleasing to the eye and enormously useful, especially if you wish to use this as a text or part of some focused study.

Many chapters are authored by one or more designers who reflect on their own approach and experience in design. I found this to be a rich source of material for thinking about ways to create new things. I would think that nearly anyone whose job requires creative output will find here some interesting and useful tools to add to their collection.

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Think differently, July 1, 2004

By A Customer

If you want a linear, predictable textbook explanation of how to do design research, this book isn't for you. If, however, you want to be grounded in an appreciation of the craft by people who live it everyday, and inspired to think differently about its many facets and future, I highly recommend it. This book seems intended for the serious practioner who wants to elevate his or her game.