Design Research: onio's take Nov 2006

I wish I knew this conference (Wonderground) earlier, I would have surely sent some write-up. It is a new begining probably when Onio has set-up a small team dedicated to Design Research. Though it is happening after 10 years of our professional practice of design in India. But yes, now this dedicated team is actually earning money for Onio...wow, Indian clients are now just about ready to pay money for DESIGN RESEARCH seprately. This team is consists of Designers, Management Super graduate and Social Anthropologist (we could manage one..). But as we are getting into this, we are realising is that all one needs is a smart mind and power to absorb, connect, project and articulate.At Onio we follow something called 'MUST' model for design research (which is our own find). Market, User, Society and Technology, all are equal realities in the business dynamics today. Tweaking anyone of them would result in setting new ripples in the market. We have incorporated SENSING as two steps before DESIGN (Sense Strategise Design). So our pitch is that 'WHAT' (research)to do is becoming a bigger question than 'HOW' (design) to do. Thus even branding exercise at Onio starts with 'SENSING' first. Conventional 'Logo design' comes towards the last end (it is amazing to see that this part of 'skill' seems to have reached an 'autopilot mode'). Similarly, for product design, 'concept generation' is way too below in the 'gantt chart' of activities. And surprisingly, I have started understanding the worthless(ness) of 'three concepts' kind of approach. Focus is now shifted to honing the 'context' and hence probably single concept would work.Our model does not explore new academic evolution of design domain but surely puts across a highly applied model of making a difference in the market. A very big challenge we find is to explain to our clientele the difference between "market research" and "design research". Which some times pops a expected question , " Is this going to provide us price- point as well?". :)Our experience with the two extreme of clients a) large international giants b) small Indian entrepreneurial set-ups who want to launch world class offerings; has been very good. Both the ends clearly understood the language we are talking and the deliverables that are expected from Design Research. It is usually the medium/large size established corporation who seem to have a set ideas on research. But it is heartening that they have started the articulation of softer issues at the top level.