At the crossroads of anthropological and ethnographic research practices, design research seeks to understand real needs in a well-defined context.

Benefits of design research

It allows you to understand complex human behavior and transfer it into actionable knowledge to guide the launch of a project or improve the project.

👉 It remove any assumptions that could start the project in the wrong direction.

It allows you to build projects based on facts and not assumptions. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking, “I already know who my customers are, so I don’t need to do any more work.” It’s true that we all have a working knowledge of who our users are, but understanding their pain points, what they’re looking for in a product, and how they would use your product are not things you can learn from a one-off email interaction.

👉 It helps with focus and prioritization.

When you’re juggling feature requests, stakeholder feedback, and a short project schedule, customer data can help you focus on what is most important. After all, if something came up during the research phase that wasn’t addressed before launch, you can bet that issue won’t go away on its own.

👉 It fosters more empathy for your customers.

Getting facetime with your customers reminds everyone that they are actual people with thoughts and feelings, not just a number on a growth projection. Building deeper connections with your customers helps you in your day-to-day work and decisions.

👉 It results in happier customers.

By observing your design in the wild, with actual customers, you can create a user experience that will delight and not frustrate. You can fix simple things like a confusing navigation or unclear path to purchase that would otherwise have resulted in support calls or frustrated customer emails.

👉 It direct investments towards areas with real potential, meeting real needs.

A design research phase to initiate a project replaces a traditional market study. The design and anthropological approach makes it possible to trace the appropriate context, the needs of the context and therefore to specify a market niche to tackle that hits the mark!

"Design research is perfectly suited to bring out new opportunities!"

👉 To discover some case studies and examples (fr) 📚Go to my Notion page with partners like Vinci construction, Coopéractiv, EDF R...

If you feel that the design research process can meet the needs of your project, do not hesitate to contact me directly and let's talk about it. 👇