A Manager of Strategic Design at a premier high tech electronics company. His responsibilities include managing research activities and their integration into the product development process.         

Coherent Research-The Design Research Perspective

Phil:   I am interested in the topic you call Coherent Research and where I ultimately want to go is to a couple of questions: why is it unique and why is it effective?

David:  Two good questions that look to challenge the value or added value of Coherent Research. I should begin by stating that Coherent Research is a new integrative process that attempts to build consensus across disciplines and corporate divisions.  It is not a new research tool or research technique.

I perceive there are two prime issues: first, as a derivative of my original Megateam work it reflects my experience that defining development groups as cross discipline teams does not make them cohesive, and second, that these cross discipline teams are not always in line with the overall corporate objective of creating the “right product” on a timely basis.         

Coherent Research means bringing together the various research activities together in a coherent and insightful manner.  Beyond that I recognize that there are areas of discovery both within the organization and outside the corporate structure.

Corporations are made up of people and departments that are not all aligned, they have different functions, interests and agendas. So when, for whatever reason, a company says we should make a new widget, or telecommunications device, there’s likely to be a lot of discussion inside the company about exactly what that product should be, before anyone even considers external market and competitive  forces. I like to start the research process in response to that discussion. That is why the first element of Coherent Research is the Internal Audit, an activity designed to achieve a number of things, such as: establish a corporate context, build internal consensus, identify resource requirements and take the first pass at creating the famous Product Performance Specification.

The next thing we do is to start conducting external research, based on the issues raised and discovered during the Internal Audit. The research toolkit includes every technique available in the marketplace, market research, marketing research, ethnographic research, user research, engineering research and so on ..... first we decide what we need to learn, then we agree on the best technique and resource it.  That might be within the corporation, my organizational net, or within the free market consulting base.                          

This process is flexible, able to change with discovery, but with a very specific objective, creating a Product Performance Specification that has a high degree of corporate ownership and a clear definition of the program scope, scale and resource needs, both  within the company and externally with regard to partners or consultant teams.

In summary and actual answer to your questions, Coherent Research is unique in the degree to which it becomes involved in the internal program definition, team building, and development of the Product Performance Specification.   It is effective because the development team has a clear mandate and is properly resourced.

Phil:   So the process has three phases, the first one is the Internal Audit, the second is the definition of the appropriate methods from the research toolkit, and the third one is consensus building on directions for concept building and eventual solutions.  Is that a linear process? Can you map it out for me?

David:   I sometimes wish it were linear, but the reality is that it is an iterative process of discovery that may change direction at any point of research or validation. Look at it like this.... every research tool may affect the Internal Audit perspective and therefore the Performance Specification. At the same time one research activity may influence another...and so on. Actually I am not sure that this process map has any value outside a specific program or context. But one thing to remember is that as the process evolves one major benefit is that the internal team view is building a valuable consensus.

Phil:   Here is where I am going with it.  I was picking up on your use of user research as being something that is generative, that starts spinning off the tentacles that you have on the top of your process diagram, that feed back into the developing performance spec.  Clearly there is a lot of looping going on and I needed to see how you understood the loops and how research links up with the other activities of the development process because I think the linkages become more important than the discrete elements.

David:  I agree and that may be a good descriptor of Coherent Research.  It is the linking, the directing and the integration of the various research activities that brings coherence.  For example, each new piece of research requires context, as defined by the current state of the Performance Specification; we must be clear on what questions we need to explore and how we expect to generate answers...sometimes that may even require the integration of different research disciplines.

Phil:   You referred in your phase two to the value of user research and the importance to choose wisely which method, or research toll to employ and where....so exactly what is in your toolkit?

David:  From a design background I am most familiar with the methods of user research, some of which I have adapted to client research. But, as I mentioned, my very first venture back in London was as a design arm of a market research company.   From that experience I became familiar with what results we can get from the various quantitative and qualitative market and marketing research tools.   Add scientific research, technology opportunity evaluation and the popular observational tools and ethnographic approaches and the toolkit becomes complete.   Some of it I do directly, the rest I am experienced in directing and managing, the benefit of my time managing programs with Herman Miller.

Phil:   How do we know which to choose and what questions to ask?

David:  I am normally driven  by the initial program definition as modified by the Internal Audit process, that group who are ultimately responsible for the development.  A foundation of the process is consensus building within that team, using research to resolve the emerging issues as they are discovered. The emerging Performance Specification will always have some aspects that are clear and some not.  It is the latter that will define research discipline, specific questions and what is an acceptable answer.  It is not good enough to answer a design question about what color blue to mold the product with a quantitative response that says 68% said yes.

Phil:   The next question is Coherent Research powerful enough to use by Fortune 500 or Fortune 50 companies, who have international operations and revenue streams? How do you go about employing methods such as video ethnography that might work in the United States, but probably won’t work to well in Asia?  Many companies get involved in research programs that are non US-centric or for which the US part is secondary.

David:  You have two questions there.  My response to the first is that larger companies, with multiple divisions, might well benefit most from the Internal Audit team building. As far as the second question goes let’s get some context.   There are a lot of American companies that sell worldwide, but most of them are selling American products and culture.  MacDonalds is the same in Paris France as in Paris Texas and the British Reebok trainers have become hard to differentiate from Nike.  Most of the time we are trying to evaluate the local response to a finished American product and in this case video based observational research works well in identifying generic responses that can be used in ongoing qualitative user research.

Phil:   The kind of thing I was thinking about was like the sale of laptop computers in Japan. We might observe that the average businessman there stays late in the office and does not need to take a laptop home, so what how are they being used?

David:  I don’t know much about that market, but there are a lot of Japanese manufacturers of Laptops and I don’t believe that they are all for export.   I might guess that it may have something to do with travel patterns or even reflect on the small size of Japanese apartments.  Once we agree that travel and home size are areas for investigation there are a lot of marketing research tools and Japanese researchers to use.  We can easily validate our assumptions about business users and take it from there.  The spider dust is in framing the questions and defining the research activity.  It comes down to the fact   that the better you understand what you are trying to find out the better the outcome.

Phil:   Looking at that same area of fast development high tech products how would you use Coherent Research to attack a problem such as, should we make a wearable cellular telephone?

David: Let’s assume the actual concept is a communications device that could be integrated into clothes, and that the core team is the two of us.  Well, the first thing that would happen would be that we would assemble a team, from within the company who might have possible interest or contribution.   That team would meet and discuss the issues such as identifying potential markets, appropriate technologies, perceived value set, features and benefits and the like, creating a first pass Product Specification consensus.

During that process we might begin to develop metaphors to describe the product or generate simple concept solutions in written and graphic form.   If that sounds like traditional brainstorming it is, but with one exception, a key part of the process would be to establish what we know, what we don’t know and how we are going to research the latter. We will be defining our initial research, the activities methods and filters.  For example we might identify a market in outdoor sports activities where light weight, no hands, simple interface solutions might all seem attractive.  We would then need to size that market, identify potential partners and develop a test methodology to present the concept to potential users, in a user research activity, and so on, all with the aim of creating a first pass Product Performance Specification.

In total we would establish context for the proposed product, create a trial balloon Product Specification, establish a research program and build team consensus.

Phil:   One last question, tell me about your competitors and how do you differentiate yourself?

David:  A part of me wants to say there are no competitors, that is I know of no one else offering the entire Coherent Research activity, but the commercial reality is probably that any company or consultant, even those  with only  a single research discipline could position themselves as the sole source you might need to research and define your program.

The other side of that coin is there are no competitors because I am not in competition with any of the existing research resources.   Any and all of them might be part of a Coherent Research activity in which I take the responsibility for managing the Internal Audit process, coordinating the research activities and ensuring the research results are well integrated into effective design and engineering direction.