Research and Innovation: A Design Perspective

by Gjoko Muratovski

Dr. Muratovski reminds us that not all researchers are working in academia! Some researchers work with clients in the private, government, NGO or non-profit sectors. How we present proposals can vary greatly depending of the setting and priorities of clients.

He was a Mentor in Residence for February 2022. He is the author of Research for Designers, and encourages us to think like designers, and cross disciplines as needed to develop innovative approaches. See this video interview with Dr. Muratovski. Also see this open-access article he wrote for Forbes Magazine, “Design-Led Innovation Vs. Marketing-Led Innovation.”

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If you are interested in working in the corporate sector or intend to prepare research design proposals for prospective clients in the corporate sector, you will need to develop a proficiency in quantitative research. Many business executives are more accustomed to seeing quantitative research coming from various market or business reports rather than qualitative research – which is often wrongfully perceived as speculative.

The Value of Research in Design

In looking to address this topic further, I also asked Jerry Kathman for his reflections on this issue. In addition to being a founder and Chairman of the Board of LPK, Kathman is also a Chairman Emeritus of the Design Management Institute (DMI) – a leading international organization that connects design to business. These are his thoughts on this matter:

Early on in my career I recognized intuitively that design adds a lot of value to business; a lot of value to commerce. I also realized that while designers play an important role in business, we are also a part of a larger story. I can still remember a client of mine from Heinz once saying: ‘I just don’t know how I feel about spending money with you. I know that if I buy ten advertising spots on network television, I know what the yield will be, and I can measure the impact. I will know what that will do to my sales. But how should I measure the impact of design?’ I certainly didn’t have the answer to that at the time.

I spent a lifetime trying to think of ways to measure the value of design. As creative people, we often resist the efforts to quantify what we do, but the reality is that we live in a world that wants to measure success. When I was the Chairman of the Design Management Institute (DMI), we launched and sponsored a design measurement tool – Design Value Index – that measured design’s return on investment. The results from this were extraordinary. We established that brands that lead with design, beat the S&P-listed companies by 228%. (These are the large companies listed on the stock exchanges in the US.) With this tool, we were able to prove that companies that use design grow faster and have higher margins than their competitors. But more importantly, your ability to measure the effects of your work can add value in itself.

Quantitative research often serves as a basis on which financial objectives and future planning are calculated, but by the same token, this research can also be used for comparing competitor companies and industry branches. This, however, is not an easy process. Measuring design in statistical terms can prove to be costly and problematic – especially since design outcomes cannot be easily extracted from the broader commercial context.

The Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative Design Research

Quantitative research is an empirical research that uses numeric and quantifiable data to arrive at conclusions. In other words, this is the type of research that uses data which can be measured and independently verified. The conclusions in quantitative research are based on experimentation, or on objective and systematic observations and statistics. That is why this type of research is often described as being ‘independent’ from the researcher in terms that it is based on ‘objective measurement of reality’ rather than on personal interpretations by the researcher.

Unlike qualitative research, which is an in-depth research used for construction of new theories, quantitative research is primarily used for simplifying and generalizing things, describing a certain phenomenon, or identifying ‘cause-and-effect’ relationships. While qualitative research is used for developing a new theory, quantitative research is mainly used for two things: testing or verifying an existing theory, or gathering statistical data. In this capacity, quantitative research is concerned primarily with measuring attitudes, behaviours, and perceptions based on a systematic observation, or by collection of numerical data. Gathered data is then used to prove or disprove ideas or assumptions. The analysis and the conclusions are based on deductive reasoning – a logical process where repeated observations of a certain phenomenon will lead to a conclusion based on high probability or predictability of occurrence.

There are many kinds of quantitative investigations that can be done. For example, you can use quantitative research to conduct surveys for various design or market research purposes, or you can conduct user-testing experiments for new products or applications (both visual and tangible). In comparison to the qualitative research questions, quantitative questions are focused on more specific things – things that can be measured or quantified in some way. For example, we can measure how often teenagers use their mobile phones, for what purposes, and the peak of their usage times. We can measure the general attitudes of senior citizens towards retirement housing by conducting a survey, and this survey can tell us what percentage of the elderly are opposing or accepting retirement housing as an option for them. We can measure the relationship between how many ‘likes’ a brand gets on their social media platforms and how this relates to the actual sales of their products. We can easily compare whether a new website interface proves a positive or negative experience for the typical users by conducting user-testing experiments. And in the same way, we can measure the effects of new product features over the old ones.

We use these types of investigations so we can create a ‘snapshot’ of the issue that we are studying. Depending on what we want to know, we can use quantitative research at all stages of our research: at the very beginning (when we want to identify particular problems); during the design development stage (when we want to test the current status of our design and its reception by the target market); and in the final stage (when we want to measure the acceptance rate of certain designs, or their effect).

There are many ways of conducting quantitative research. There are basically two main ways of conducting quantitative research: by using surveys and conducting experiments. In both cases, what you need to be aware of is that there are two key things that you need to take into consideration: the setting – where and how you are conducting your research; and the sampling – how are you selecting your participants. Your choice on the setting and the sampling can have a significant effect on the results of your research.