By Chris Rockwell, IDSA and Spencer Murrell, IDSA Chris@lextant.com I smurrell@lextant.com Chris Rockwell founded Lextant in 2000.

He has spent his career putting user experience at the center of innovation. I Spencer Murrell is the VP of insight translation at Lextant. Prior to Lextant he spent three decades in product development consulting roles.

Seeing the Future Through Insight Translation

TURNING DATA INTO INSIGHT

esign research has grown as a discipline over the yearsintegrating the fields of design, psychology, anthropology, human factors, market research and consumer behavior along the way in order to understand human experiences and desires. The goal of design research has always

been to inform and inspire design thinking and decision making. Unfortunately, engineers, marketers and sometimes even designers can have a difficult time knowing how to act on research findings. Design research should help us understand how desires, features and benefits can be triggered through design. It should clearly define both the design problem or opportunity and how to focus creativity into effective design outcomes.
The insight translation research process uses discovery, analysis and synthesis to turn data into insight. While useful, this insight alone doesnt help us see the future. Insight translation spans the gap between research and designusing creative expression to demonstrate how research findings can impact future design efforts. Problem Seeking and Problem Solving While insight translators are designers, they do not provide design solutions. Rather, they use creative skills and design knowledge to illustrate the problem to be solved. By aligning on the right problem, teams can communicate more effectively and innovate more freely. Teams can also use the translation framework to evaluate how well concepts deliver on the desired customer experience. This approach improves time to market and results in better customer experiences.

Left: Multisensory stimuli provide measurable data. Below: Stimuli can be translated into design attributes.

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

29

Storyboards describe an ideal experience.

Describing the future experience and how it can be achieved through design can take many forms. Translation can be as simple as a well-crafted problem statement or as involved as an ideal product model that describes, in detail, the key attributes that deliver a desired experience. But, in each case, it must adhere to four key principles to ensure its quality and effectivenessinsight translation must be meaningful, aspirational, actionable and inspirational. Meaningful. To deliver a true translation of research insights, there must be a clear connection to the data. Multisensory participatory techniques, because of the rich stimulus set, allow a more direct translation of consumer meaning to product form. Not only do these multisensory techniques enable consumers to express themselves efficiently about design issues, they also give the translation team visual examples of design attributes. The images on page 29 show how a multisensory stimulus set can provide measurable data that translates directly to design attributes.

Aspirational. Each translation effort should tell a story of the future. This is, in essence, the customers ideal experience and the qualities of the designed systems that deliver it. These can be crafted as narratives, storyboards and illustrations that include a future product. In each case the product, interaction or technology is expressed in terms of its benefits and how it enhances the future experience of the user. The example above illustrates a future concept for a communication tool that seamlessly integrates smart phone and laptop functionalities into a single product. The product illustration and storyboard treat the product as generic but manage to translate the customers expectations for features, benefits and design attributes. Actionable. Insight translation should provide concrete descriptions of the sensory attributes that trigger emotions and the desired experience. Visual descriptions can be effective, but often tactile qualities, smell, sound and taste are used to provide the most complete metaphors

30

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

A future story integrates emotions, benefits, features and design attributes into actionable criteria.

Metaphors used to describe brand personality.

to describe a future experience. The illustration above shows a translation for a shampoo product. It illustrates the consumers expectations for smell, texture, packaging and interaction behaviors that deliver on the ideal experience. Inspirational. It is important that translation communicate to design teams in a way that provides creative freedom and focuses them on the needs and expectations of the consumer. Translation must be descriptive (describes the experience) rather than prescriptive (defines the design). The images on the right show translations of a program to understand consumer perceptions of cell phone carriers. Specifically, we communicated the personality of the brand (top, right) and the potential design cues for the products that would meet consumer expectations (bottom, right). As you can see, the translations of our findings, while descriptive, are still broad enough to allow a wide range of design exploration.

Design attributes of cell phones that match brand personality.

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

31

Left: An ideal product model diagrams the key benefit areas. Below: Benefit areas are built out with detailed descriptions of features and design attributes.

Translation Workshops Insight translation should be an explicit step in the research and design process. The process works best when collaborating with the design team. It allows them to apply their knowledge of their business and capabilities and helps them to focus and prioritize future design efforts. Translation workshops are becoming our preferred way of ensuring that we match our clients capabilities with our knowledge of the customers expectations. These activities require a significant commitment of resources and time but can be incredibly valuable sometimes transforming from next years design initiative into a strategic planning session. The three key ingredients for a translation workshop are the right stimulus or tool set, the right mix of people and a shared passion to deliver customers their ideal experience. The illustrations on this page show examples of rich stimuli for a translation workshop. The top diagram represents an ideal product model. It describes the key product attributes that deliver the consumers ideal experience. The segments of the model (key attributes) are described in detail at the rightthat are actionable, meaningful, aspirational and inspirational. The model can be deconstructed by segment and used for breakout sessions where subteams explore ways to deliver different parts of the ideal. Team formation for workshops should represent various stakeholder groups in the organization in addition to outside partners crucial to implementation. This helps cre-

ate alignment within the team as to the problem to be solved and the criteria for success and allows each contributor to focus and deliver a consistent, cohesive customer experience. Insight translation is the obvious next step in the evolution of design research. It fills the gap between research and design by creating memorable (sticky) presentations of research insights that go on to become institutional knowledge. Done correctly, it will provide organizational alignment around the correct problem to be solved and a framework for focusing creative resources to determine how to deliver the ideal experience. I

32

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

Q&A

Procter & Gamble

What techniques work best? Specific to innovation, having a general understanding or framework of consumer differentiation and trend modeling is helpful; you need a way to identify people with common sets of needs. This allows you to really investigate what makes people similar and different. Its this framework that allows you to go out and talk to groups of people about an experience or emotion and define it in a way that can be acted on. If you know the size of those groups of people, its even better because you can project the potential business opportunity. This is quite specific, but I always feel its worth stating. When talking to people about their wants and needs, dont narrow the scope of your conversation too early. Peoples lives are complex; seemingly disparate experiences and tasks have an impact on each other. I find that starting broadly with your conversation allows you to uncover the interconnectedness of tasks and emotions. Its the areas between the known points that show new opportunities. Lastly, when the people you are talking to are having a good time, you are getting good information. Pumping people for likes and dislikes ends quickly. Devising research methods that are game-oriented and appeal to peoples sense of competitionor that are just plain funkeep people engaged. Such approaches will make sure that the data youre collecting are valuable. What are the benefits of design research to your organization? Though many categorize it as design research, when done well I would just call it quality research. I have known people who were staunchly opposed to design research. Once they experience it, however, they talk very positively about the depth of insights and quality of work that gets developed with a quality design research method. The two biggest benefits of quality research I see are better team dynamics based on a common vision and higher quality work across all aspects of the product development process. In other words, teams work better and deliver higher quality results. I feel like its necessary to say that to get these benefits the research needs to be done with a good team. At P&G we leverage all the disciplines and build a cross-functional group to contribute to and participate in the methodology. Without this team, research would frequently become one-sided and only useful to small parts of the company, which would result in the lack of continuity in the consumer proposition. What challenges do you experience with design research? I see two big challenges with research in my work. First, its not always easy with limited resources to convince others in the business to go forward with something that looks very designoriented. However, the more experiences we have with these types of research, the more widely accepted they are becoming. At this point its about being a strong advocate for the methods, helping people understand their value and delivering great results when we get the opportunity. In my almost seven years with the company I have seen design building capability and credibility around how to inspire innovation and measuring the success of design work, which is really exciting. The second is a challenge particular to research for innovation; we sometimes believe that people can tell us all we need to know. The synthesis (conversion of the collected information into action or deeper meaning) is equally as important as the research itself. It takes time, and the conversation is frequently nonlinear. This is not work anyone can do; it takes a devoted, patient team. I am happy to say, the more experience we gain with these tools, along with positive results, the less challenging this issue becomes. We are on a journey with how we use research to inspire, inform and qualify design work within the context of a holistic proposition. The key is that we are using the right tools to get the information we need to do our work and develop products and services that make peoples lives better.
Guy Wilkins Principal Design Manager

28

Q&A

GE Healthcare
What techniques work best? The design organization at GE Healthcare works across a broad portfolio of products that presents an ever-changing landscape of questions and constraints, so there is no single set of techniques that always works best. However, there are three common scenarios we are asked to address: identify unmet needs, prioritize potential features and validate how a product meets defined requirements. To address these questions, our teams employ a range of techniques from field-centered observational research to lab-centered scenario testing. These techniques are often used in the context of an iterative process, as opposed to a stand-alone approach where one technique is used in isolation. Of course, we do have our favorite techniques. During the exploratory phase of product development, we seek to identify unmet needs as a primary source of insight for new products or services. Contextual inquiry is one of our preferred tools in this phase. Through observation it provides rich insights into what people actually are (or are not) doing, as opposed to what they say they are doing while in a focus group or in their responses to a survey. That being said, GE Healthcare also leverages focus groups and surveys, but almost never in isolation as stand-alone techniques. We find that the zone of supposed paradox between what is observed and what is said often forms a rich source of data to drive innovation. In addition to exploring what is happening in the user environment, we use a variety of semistructured interviewing methods, such as laddering, to develop insights into the drivers behind why those behaviors are occurring. Once these foundational data have been collected, we typically synthesize our findings through user personas, affinity maps, flowcharts and storyboards. Conjoint analysis is frequently used both to prioritize identified unmet needs and the feature sets intended to address those needs. Finally, during the validation process we use a variety of formal usability testing methods in a controlled lab environment. How do you use research? Primarily to generate ideas or to evaluate ideas? Both. The GE Healthcare design group passionately advocates for a structured and iterative research process that balances the generation and evaluation of ideas. Ideas for products and services are generated on the basis of data that build insights about unmet needs. Those ideas in turn are incorporated into prototypes that are subjected to evaluative testing, and those prototypes are then improved on

A structured process for creating meaningful and differentiated user experiences. Image courtesy of GE Healthcare.

the basis of the collected feedback as to how well they satisfy those needs. The more generate/evaluate iterations we can fit within the early stages of the development cycle before locking down a final product concept, the better. Above is a high-level illustration of our process for building meaningful user experiences through design research. Note that we strive to engage all of the stakeholders in the development process, both as early as possible and throughout the entire process. Leveraging the insights of a cross-functional team enables a more robust generation and evaluation of ideas. What are the benefits of design research to your organization? Considering this question at the level of our overall GE Healthcare organization, design research brings the human element deeply into a development process that otherwise is dominated by technology- and financially-centered criteria. By so doing, design research enables the business to focus development and marketing efforts in areas that are truly meaningful to our customers, thereby driving commercial success by differentiating our product solutions in the marketplace. Considering this question from the perspective of just the GE Healthcare design organization, design research provides credibility for our recommendations. It illustrates that designing useful and usable products is based upon neither simple common sense nor unsubstantiated personal opinion, but rather a repeatable and robust methodology that requires specialized expertise to execute.
Ravi S. Adapathya General Manager, Global Product Experience

34

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

Q&A

Sony
How has research helped you innovate? One immediate way research helps us innovate is by providing common frameworks we can share across the company and different business groups to describe user segments or customer groups. Sony has tools based on months of research that allow marketing folks in the US to describe a segment like stay-at-home moms who surf the net and have business groups in Tokyo who immediately understand some basic criteria of this segments habits and desires. While there is a lot of variance in defining that segment precisely, the frameworks provide an initial starting point for the discussion that make up for cultural and market gaps. What outputs do you find most inspirational for your design team? For our design team what we find most interesting are research outputs that provide a look inside unique or emerging subcultures. What inspires us are developing trends: the rise of the X Games and the importance of the green movement have directly inspired how Sony envisions new products and technologies (such as our sports Walkman line and more recently our eco LCD TVs). Things that exist on the cultural periphery today and the new ways people are directly or indirectly interacting with technology provide us the most fuel for imagination and inspiration. What are the benefits of design research to your organization? Design research, when we do execute or perform it, allows us to tell different stories to answer one piece of the difficult question of what will resonate with the customer. Design research in many cases supports an existing hypothesis about a new product concept. With this hypothesis the design research helps to nudge the development path to the left or right. The research can provide a set of considerations that the designer needs to prioritize, then address. After a concept has been created, design research can again find the pain points in an experience or suggest further development. But its never used as a red light for an idea.

Brand association exercise with locally recruited teens.

What challenges do you experience with design research? Naturally, like most firms, we face internal and external challenges when it comes to using design research. Internally, theres always a translation factor when it comes to user insights. What designers see in the data might not be exactly what the marketing person or business planner see in the same data. Each team member can have their own aha moment. These different interpretations require a lot of internal debate and weighing of criteria in order to get a majority agreement in the room. Determining whats the important takeaway that should be acted upon is always one of the biggest challenges for our teams. Externally, our challenges in design research mainly come from our engagements and collaborations with outside firms. Often its as simple as problems with storytelling. Some of the firms Ive worked with have a tendency to reduce really rich qualitative data into simply a report. These firms lose all the richness and energy of the subject as they translate the information to a PowerPoint deck for final presentations. If we are watching these reduced presentations with team members from the business side, they begin looking at their watches and checking their email 10 minutes in. Often whats most inspiring for the design team is taking peeks into previously unexplored worlds. That sense of discovery has to come through in presentations to management, particularly when the outside research firm is working on the designers behalf.
Ronald Clark Manager, Strategy Group

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

33

Q&A

Diebold
How has research helped you innovate? When were able to perform research early in the development process, it acts as an incredibly useful guide. It sometimes reminds us to take a step back to ensure our focus is set on true user needs instead of on refining and redesigning existing solutions. Having access to good and timely research helps me make sure were operating at the correct altitude to address the problem were solving. What are the benefits of design research to your organization? Above all else, design research provides directionality. More specifically, it can remove conjecture and anecdote from both the specification and development processes. It also fulfills the desire for the development team to do the best job they possibly can and with the best data available. It fuels the entire teams creativity. From a purely financial perspective, the benefits are measurable, both through creating a more guided and efficient development target as well as minimizing the likelihood of any redesign or rework. What challenges do you experience with design research? Most of the challenges we face with design research are related to the different priorities or understandings of internal stakeholders. We know we must be very meticulous in ensuring weve engaged all of the correct internal stakeholders. Often, if the research findings arent written and presented diligently and with consideration, some people who are less familiar with design research fixate on small details, or they take a piece of the findings literally rather than understanding the directionality it provides. Timing and cost are also challenges. It can be difficult to convince some audiences of the value of the research if they havent been through a well-done design research effort before. With regard to timing, when researching larger scope efforts, such as those that are international, it can be difficult to convince engineering groups, who are anxious to get started, to wait to begin the project until we get the results.
Paul Magee, IDSA Director, Strategic Design & Brand Integrity

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

39

By Laura Seargeant Richardson and Erin M. Sanders laura.richardson@frogdesign.com I erin.sanders@frogdesign.com Laura Seargeant Richardson, a principal designer for frog design and former director of design research at M3 Design, specializes in the emotional, participatory and future design of products and environments. I Erin Sanders, a senior designer for frog design Shanghai, has worked on service design innovations, consumer electronics and software development interactive systems as well as global design research for industrial, healthcare and digital design projects.

Making the Qualitative Quantitative

A PATTERN PERSPECTIVE

The conclusion of design flows naturally from the data;

Michael Behe

we should not shrink from it; we should embrace it and build on it.

44

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

s designers should we seek to be inspired or informed by research? Before we answer that question, we need to step back and consider a commonly held assumption that design is not a democracy. Future innovation does not come from the people for whom we design. Instead,

it comes from design rock stars, industry veterans and visionaries through a deep-seated knowledge, a propensity for creative thinking and designerly knowing, a la inspiration. This beliefthat inspiration is the basis for design ideashas led some businesses and designers to use ethnography as a tool to merely inspire. However, another way to consider ethnographic research in the design process is to use it as a creative foundation built on structure, rigor and information analysis. When used this way, what emerges is a creative framework and a foundation for designwhat we commonly refer to as the pattern perspective.
On Inspiration Inspiration is a natural and necessary part of the design process. Inspiration is what fuels us and certainly informs us along with the practice of our craft, our innate intuition and our quest to constantly improve the world or products around us. As designers we are more observant than most to that world. Our gift is a honed ability to see something in almost anythingthe careless flick of cigarette ash, the casual conversation overheard or a persons behavior in a public bathroom. Meaningful moments like these have been captured by Jane Fulton Suri, IDSA in her book Thoughtless Acts? Inspiration, inherently, is an internal reflection process, built from the designers constructs. What Suri may see and consider with one image, another designer would see in a very different manner, and they would each create entirely unique responses to what they see as designers. The limitation of inspiration is that our internal ideation is not from co-creation, a shared understanding or an external process. It is an individual pursuit. And while there is beauty in the singular, there is meaning in the multiple multiple perspectives (usually your team), multiple inputs (usually a variety of research methods), multiple people (stakeholders, subject matter experts and consumers) and multiple dimensions (because the problems we solve arent always simple and are part of larger systems and processes). Thus, we would argue that inspiration is not always enough for the challenges we face today. Inspiration may help us see the opportunity but doesnt always provide the best solution. And ultimately the qualitative nature of ethnography remains simply that, qualitative.

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

45

DESIGN RESEARCH

The Patterns Around Us As humans, we live in a world of patternssound, scent, touch, taste and certainly visual. As a profession, we have made patterns the gestalt of design. A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander or Principles of Pattern Design by Richard Proctor grace most shelves, depending on your discipline. Patterns help us wrangle complexity, provide structure to data and soothe our need for symmetry. But more than any other affordance, patterns provide meaningparticularly, meaning in the complexity of gathered data. At frog design, patterns are a part of our DNA. The way we interpret and synthesize datawhether its from strategic investigation, secondary research, workshop ideation or cocreation in participatory designalways comes back to patterns. This pattern perspective has even been formalized in both our proprietary and nonproprietary methods. We might also look at patterns multidimensionally through the combination of stakeholders, a products life cycle and the lens through which we focussuch as behavior, emotion and organization. But what pattern analysis can we create from participatory design and co-creation with only a handful of people or from more traditional ethnography where we historically have gathered singular moments of inspiration? How many participants are enough for data-driven research analysis? Several years ago, an article on P&G described the moment the company changed its approach to research. Rather than focus groups and statistics, the companys newest product innovation was diving deep and immersive with as few as three to four people. One innovation lead even quipped that hed learn more by going deep with one person than he ever could by going broad with many. And in the aggressive timelines we are all seeing today, sometimes you dont have the luxury of quantitative studies. Thus, the answer is to set up our immersion so that we see patterns across only a few participants. Patterning Tools From the future of electric vehicles to more responsive medical identification, from group game play to products for the Asian market, we have had to craft design research protocols and synthesize the collected data into usable patterns with as few as four participants and sometimes as many as 20. The commonality across the research has been the purposeful planning and composition of the probing or creationary artifacts as well as the researchers focus lens. The goal of the participatory design process is to enable co-creation through the act of making the ideal or future product. Because the research team typically provides the inputs (e.g., the kit of parts) to the act of making, patterns are quickly determined. The kit of parts can take

A design synthesis, creating insight combinations through themes and patterns.

46

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

Scott Stater

Above: The teenagers move from individual ideal to group understanding through game construct continuums. Below: A pattern emerges: wayfinding goals are clearly discerned from common color blocks.

the form of Velcro modeling, image collaging, card sorting, process mapping or environmental touchpoints. Two projects exemplify this type of research perfectly. The first was a concept project designed as part of a team (also including Greg Burkett and Vincent Lam) at M3 Design. The idea was simple. While participatory tools have become more contextual and sensorial, as well as larger in terms of what challenges we tackle using this methodology (e.g., Velcro modeling an entire car), the team felt that the approach to inclusion and analysis hadnt really changed. Typically, participatory design is done one-on-one, with the kit contents serving as the common factor between individuals and the individuals ideals and stories merging through the lens of the researcher or designer. We wondered what were we missing by not enabling the crowd to co-create together, to share a common kit rather than mirror images of separate kits. Well, it turns out we were missing a lot. The context we set to ground the exercise was in the form of the ideal group game experience for teenagers. To ensure their ability to move from individual mental models to a group mindset when creating the ideal game, we method-

ically took four teenagers through a series of co-creation activities. The first was an individual image collage, the second was a series of shared continuums around game construct (such as characters, rules and environment), and the third was a single group MAKE kit built from basic physical objects. We found that by enabling participants to co-create together, more improvised innovation developed. The teenagers fed off each others ideas, picking up and discarding them as they worked through the challenge together. The second example of participatory design is a recent project at frog that looked at peoples wayfinding goals as they walked through an environment. After the research was conducted, each set of the participants goals was laid out horizontally and then mapped to a color that corresponded to a specific goal. A matrix of eight participants was created this way, with the goals shared by the group visibly seen through color. Because of the proprietary nature of the research, all context has been removed. But that is the beauty in patterns: you can still clearly see the wayfinding process in the resulting color blocks, much like a Mondrian work of art.

Vincent Lam

I N N O V AT I O N S P R I N G 2 0 1 0

47

A spider map reveals the areas of opportunity that would most pleasurably impact the design of an intra-oral product.

imagine replicating this across participants. How many patterns are missed because we must take in an overall picture rather than focus on the minutia? This method lets the team focus on both. Aligning the Qualitative and Quantitative Recently a frog design team based in Shanghai traveled to Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore to understand the cultural context and behavioral nuisances in designing an international product for the Southeast Asian market. Here, we utilized ethnographic methods of capture to delve into the dayto-day lives of individuals. We planted ourselves in malls, in bustling business districts, in hospitals and on every type of transportation and watched thousands of individuals use hundreds of products. Simultaneously, our ethnographic research took us into history museums, art galleries and houses of worship to understand the deeply embedded intricacies of the cultures for which we were designing. While visiting these cities we also performed a small subset of contextual inquiries in which we ventured into peoples homes and lives. We performed home and product tours, contextual interviews and participatory design exercises that helped us understand how these individuals were placing value on everything they owned as well as the images we had captured through our ethnographic inquiries. In order to disseminate the large quantity of data into something more suitable, we held translation sessions at the end of every day of research. Here we were able to leverage the ethnographic data against the individual contextual inquiries. We found patterns emerging almost immediately. Ultimately, we were able to make the qualitative and the quantitative align. We did not survey the thousands of individuals we observed, but instead meticulously watched their behaviors in real-world contexts. We then were able to take a much smaller sample of individuals and explore deeply into their thoughts, feelings and aspirations toward the specific product we were designing for. With one visualization you can captivate your toughest clients and persuade your internal team. Patterns, quite simply, are hard to refute. Why? Because we all crave understanding in the face of voluminous data. Is the goal of research to be inspired or informed? It all really depends on your perspective. I

In probing alignment or resonance to a concept, the goal is to determine resonance in a structured way such that patterns will emerge. For example, in probing participants emotional response to medical identification concepts, we revealed controlled aspects of the product over time and then created a heartbeat, or EKG graph to show a composite, not an average, view across eight participants. Similarly, another project required deconstructing the pleasure dimensions in the mouth and through research determining which dimensions the product team should focus on for a product redesign. A dimension, for example, might be lip engagement (lips are the second-most sensitive part of our bodies), surface area and texture as well as visual properties. The result was a spider graph across 11 participants, which showed the dimensions that had the greatest product improvement opportunities for the industrial design team. And finally, in the more typically unstructured behavioral ethnography the goal is to observe unobtrusivelybut even then, there can be structure in the observation such that the patterns in behavior, gesture and process can be discerned. As teams we practice focusing our attention on specific components of an ethnographic encounter. Part of observing, really observing, is knowing what to look for and seeing the essence of things in an instant. So, while a videographer might unobtrusively capture the overall picture, each team member may be assigned a specific area of focusone on behavior, one on gesture and so on. Now

48

W W W. I N N O V AT I O N J O U R N A L . O R G

Q&A

Hewlett-Packard
What techniques work best? Contextual research is best because it captures customer experiences as they use the product. Otherwise, when people are not actually using the product in question, such as in focus groups, they sometimes forget work-arounds and other negative experiences. The laboratory-based usability studies have also worked very well for us in helping to refine concepts and ensure users are able to fully utilize the product, as well as compare different design alternatives. Weve also used surveys and remote-guided interviews when we are trying to learn more about how our customers are using our designs and what their needs are, and to gather trending information (what percentage are using a certain feature, etc.). Ideally in order to maximize the opportunity for new information, it is best to do this research outside of a roadmap program where there is not time-to-market, strict budgets and predetermined product requirements. What outputs do you find most inspirational for your design team? Our team attends events, such as CES in Las Vegas and the annual auto show in Houston, to look for trends in consumer electronics and automotive design as well as leading-edge technology. We do competitive breakdowns and user evaluations as well as Internet research of new products, materials and processes. Inspiration for innovation also comes from other forms of media, such as the cinema with Minority Report and Iron Man and more recently Avatar, as well as new products and applications like the iPhone and Cool Iris. These have been an inspiration for our software user interface vision projects. We also have gone back to nature (biomimicry) for inspiration in thinking about breaking paradigms. What are the benefits of design research to your organization? Design research is clearly the best way to provide highly competitive design solutions that differentiate your products from the competition. It is also a verification, when integrated with appropriate human-factors testing and evaluation, of the usefulness and benefit to customers. It is a good way for us to explore how our customer experience compares to that of our competitors and identify areas where we can improve, as well as those where we excel.
George Daniels, IDSA Design Navigator, Enterprise Design Center
The rack-mounted console is easy to locate and deploy due to the unique silver color and blue LED lighting that highlights the interaction area. To avoid distraction, the LED turns off when the console cover is opened.

49