Janet Chang’s Blog about Design

Insight Translation: Bridging the Gap between Research and Design

Speaker: Marty Gage, Lextant
Date: September 19, 2008

Design = Problem solving
Design Research = Problem seeking

Principles of Insight Translation:

• Aspirational – expresses what people wish.
• Actionable – data that affords translation. Concrete. Sensory. Direct. (this one is tough)
• Meaningful - clearly linked to the research data. ( back up with numbers)
• Inspirational – descriptive not prescriptive. (combination of different inspirations show possibilities)

Examples: What is a rugged phone?

• Stimulus planning
• Collaborative image
• Sample kit
• Colleague
• Increase meaning (connection to the date) by shortening the leap between actionable stimulus and inspirational

Big Ideas

• Provides a clear transition from customer meaning to product attributes – focusing team creativity for market success.
• Requires visual skills and concrete thinking to embody abstract ideas and principles.
• The object is not to solve problem, but to create a framework to focus creativity.
• Planning is critical to getting the right input from people to effectively translate insights for design teams.

• In the end how to present the ideas in a concrete matters.
• Question the users what’s important.
• Before use the words, find out what that means.
• Materials, forms and shapes are carefully chosen for he sample kit.
• You need to discuss the “concrete” thing first before you can run the principles of insight translation.

How to identify the word “roughed”
Find out what’s matter to users and what’s important to them based on their explanation.