Paul J. Nini

Abstract:

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” – Abraham Lincoln.

Mr. Lincoln’s advice is, of course, very good, and applicable to many pursuits. Yet many graphic design practitioners and students often routinely ignore this sentiment, and dive directly into form-making activities when presented with a design problem. In most cases we tend to rely on intuition and our “best guess” to construct a solution, without the benefit of the various types of research that might provide a clearer insight as to how our efforts might be more effectively directed. Our profession might be characterized, if you will, as “swinging a dull axe.”

I intend, therefore, to put forward a concept for a comprehensive model that incorporates the various types of research activities that graphic designers might employ in the process of creating effective solutions to the problems we generally address. These activities will be tied to a typical model of the design process, which involves such basic steps as problem investigation, analysis and planning, and synthesis and evaluation. The types of research activities discussed will include: gathering and analyzing competitors’ efforts and related approaches to similar projects; establishing criteria for evaluating design efforts; and approaches to soliciting generative, evaluative, and experiential feedback from users and audiences members.

As well, different methods of user research techniques will be demonstrated, including survey research (what viewers say), observational research (what viewers do), and participatory research (what viewers make). Discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of these techniques as they apply to typical projects will be discussed. Finally, examples of student work will be included, as will explanations of the kinds of research techniques used to inform these design solutions.

The goal of this paper is to present the basic information needed for graphic designers to consider incorporating the demonstrated research techniques in their work. It is my hope that more graphic designers will pursue a research-based approach to the process of creating appropriate and effective communications for the various users and audience groups for which they design.