I heard several time, the marketing team was saying that “we don’t need another design research since we already have done the market research, why don’t you reuse that information ?” The marketing team may do the research with their customers who buy the product/services but ignore who is using the same. As a designer, we have to understand not only the unfamiliar process but also the needs goals of the users who buying, using, maintaining the product/services. Here I am trying to differentiate the difference between design and market research.
Design Research: A good design research will help us to get the high and low-level information such as the need/goal of our target user and number of character have to allow in a text field. Good designers can create a useful design without proper research if the problem is familiar and straightforward. But we have to focus on research to a complex variable: human behaviour. Even something as simple as organising a video collection requires knowing how much video someone has, how they mentally categorize it, and how his or her watching behaviour differs in various scenarios. only through good research, we can establish the experience facts.
Market Research: Marketing team may consider only their customers who buy the product/services but ignore who is using the same. Even the buyer and user is the same person, market research provides only the information about selling the product on the market. For example, market research data will tell you how many people will buy the SUV’s who have 2 children and an average income of ‘X’. But neither will tell you what the average families use their vehicle for, what things they bring along to keep the kids entertained in the back seat. But design research will help you on this because it is focusing on the context the product is going to be used and the behaviour of the users in the same context.
Additional Tip: A solid design research will speed up the decision-making process because it prevents opinions from the marketing teams since we can back up with reasoning with data.
If you will hear the same statements again from the marketing team, you could prevent the same with these points. Hope this will help you.
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