Previously, our website published the position that a separate stage of design research in industrial design is redundant. We proposed to start development immediately with concepts, weaving analysis into the process.
This approach works great for simple and understandable tasks, although it carries hidden risks. Therefore, with the complication of products and the growth of the scale of projects, we completely reassembled this step. Today, Design Research is a mandatory Stage No1 at USAEV, which solves purely practical business problems and serves to fine-tune the project at the start.
What is the real value of Design Research?
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Deep dive. We start with an in-depth online briefing and review of the materials you provide. The team analyzes in detail the product, production constraints, competitor decisions, and industry trends. This allows you to accurately determine the positioning of the future product and get into the context before starting time-consuming work on finding concepts and working out details.
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Development of a project brief. The result of the first stage is the agreed Project Brief. It completely relieves you of the task of preparing detailed design requirements yourself. We formulate them together based on an online briefing and coordinated research, creating a solid foundation for subsequent design development.
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Protection against system errors. This stage allows you to make sure of the commercial viability of the product and eliminate serious mistakes at the start. Any adjustment of goals and constraints at the research stage takes place “on paper” (in the text of the brief), and the rearrangement of design concepts due to unaccounted restrictions at subsequent stages is ten times more expensive and shifts the project deadlines. Thus, the results of the stage highlight critical nuances and protect the customer from strategic mistakes.
How does this happen in practice?
The process is dynamic and consists of three consecutive steps:
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In-depth briefing. We conduct online interviews with your team (engineers, marketers, product managers) to collect all explicit and hidden technical limitations.
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Parallel analytics. While you are handing over the source files to us, we prepare a project brief, analyze the product, production constraints, competitor solutions, and industry trends.
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Approval of the brief. We present you the results of the study, approve the Brief and proceed to the generation of the first draft concepts.
The scale of the stage depends on the task
The duration of the stage and the volume of analytics are adaptive and depend on the context of the project and the complexity of the product:
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For understandable products, a few days are enough. This time is enough to study the introductory materials, clarify key issues and fix the requirements in the Brief.
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Complex equipment, competitive or innovative products may require an in-depth pre-project study.
What is the output?
The result of Stage No1 is two understandable artifacts that fix the framework of the project:
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Presentation of the design study (PDF). Compact report with key insights on the market, competitor solutions, industry trends, and product positioning.
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Agreed Project Brief. Document detailing project goals, objectives, ergonomics, CMF and design requirements. It removes any uncertainty and becomes the foundation for further work.
Design research at USAEV is a quick and flexible step that ensures that you get the exact design your business and market needs.
