It has become evident that both private and public sectors consider “DESIGN” as the potential way to create innovative, meaningful and useful products and services. In order to achieve this end, design-led research and development hold the essential key to identify how people experience the shortcomings of existing products and services.
However, design-led research (design research) differs from “asking people what they want”. You need to dig deep into the structural and systemic problems that people feel subconsciously, and your task as a design researcher is to embody that problem collaboratively. Sometimes you need to generate a tool for people to make their problems visible by themselves, sometimes you need to make a diagram for people to visualise the complex stakeholder relationships.
This course provides students with basic knowledge and skill in design-led research activities. This course will ask students to actively engage with design research. I would recommend that those who wish to take this course have experience in developing a product or service of any kind (for private or public sector, tangible or intangible) previously.