A Designer's Research Manual: Succeed in Design by Knowing Your Clients and What They Really Need (Design Field Guide)

Designers can use a broad range of tools for visualization, including computer renderings, models, comps, storyboards and mood boards to visually articulate their concepts.

Information Literacy, a life-long learning strategy, focuses on empowering individuals by instilling the ability to recognize when information is needed and to have the skills to find, evaluate, analyze, and effectively use that information.

Psychographics is a quantitative tactic used to measure subjective beliefs, opinions, and interests. In other words, it is a quantitative tool for measuring qualitative information.

Ethnographers use snowball sampling to find participants, called informants, for their studies. Informants lead to others, who then lead to more, and so on. A broad sampling is necessary to provide the researcher with an accurate representation of the emic perspective of the group under study.

competitor profi ling

careful consideration of a competitor’s publicly available corporate communications (such as annual reports and press releases), ad placement, messaging, and discernible brand presence.

Ethnographers are expected to be refl exive in their work. This means that they are expected to document their own process of research as well as give insight to their own personal backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

Emic investigations defi ne cultural phenomena through the perspective of the community under study.

AIGA’s Designing Framework divides project development into three categories: defineing the problem, innovating, and generating value.