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A Designer's Research Manual: Succeed in Design By Knowing Your Clients and Understanding What They Really Need
Good information gives designers a competitive advantage. Understanding the wishes of a client and the needs and preferences of their audience drives innovation. The ability to gather research, analyze findings, and apply them to project goals is as important to successful design teams as their conceptual and aesthetic skills. This essential handbook will help readers understand what design research is and why it is necessary, outline proven techniques and methods, and explain how to incorporate them into any creative process.
A Designer's Research Manual was one of the first books to apply research practices to the benefit of visual communication designers. This long awaited second edition follows more than a decade of active use by practitioners, design educators, and students around the world. Comprehensively updated, A Designer's Research Manual second edition includes:
Over 25 proven research strategies and tactics
Added content about planning research, analyzing results, and integrating research into the design process
Suggestions for scaling research for any project, timeline, or budget
All new in-depth case studies from industry leaders, outlining strategy and impact
Updated images, illustrations, and visualizations
Quick Tips for rapid integration of research concepts into your practice
A Designer's Research Manual was one of the first books to apply research practices to the benefit of visual communication designers. This long awaited second edition follows more than a decade of active use by practitioners, design educators, and students around the world. Comprehensively updated, A Designer's Research Manual second edition includes:
Over 25 proven research strategies and tactics
Added content about planning research, analyzing results, and integrating research into the design process
Suggestions for scaling research for any project, timeline, or budget
All new in-depth case studies from industry leaders, outlining strategy and impact
Updated images, illustrations, and visualizations
Quick Tips for rapid integration of research concepts into your practice
208 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2017
60 people are currently reading
420 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
September 26, 2018
This book looks very useful, but I cannot wholly recommend it because of obvious factual errors.
On page 78, when explaining web analytics, the authors claim “users’ IP addresses” are “unique to every computer on the web”. Even if technically true at any given point in time and when network paths are considered, from a web analytics point of view this is false and has been false for at least two decades.
Even in 2006, when the first edition came out, this statement had already been factually incorrect for a few years: All computers behind a proxy share the same public IP address (i.e., you can undercount visitors, possibly by several orders of magnitude in the case of university campuses, for example), and most residential computers were already given random “dynamic” IP addresses (i.e., you can overcount and you can mix up the identities of your visitors).
(Version 1.0 of the Squid proxy ceased development in 1996, so firewalled HTTP access must have existed more than two decades ago. It’s very hard to believe anyone would claim IP addresses are “unique” even in 2006.)
I obviously can’t claim to have seen any “proprietary” analytics software. Maybe the author is talking about the military or the police, but even if that were the case they aren’t doing this by IP addresses alone (they would need to use their special powers to do things normal people aren’t allowed to do). As for the publicly available ones, I’ve never seen any take these facts into consideration, or when they do, it’s done wrong so the results are wrong.
By 2017, when the second edition came out, the world had already officially run out of IPv4 addresses for six years. Unless the authors have been misled to believe IPv6 adoption was already at 100%, it’s incredible that the authors continue to claim, in the second edition, that IP addresses are “unique” to “every computer on the web”. (Even if IPv6 adoption were at 100%, I would not claim IPv6 is “unique” even if every IPv6 address is tied to MAC addresses, since MAC addresses can be changed on some devices.)
Modern analytics partly depend on cookies and fingerprinting (even in 2006 the better analytics software depended on cookies) precisely because IP addresses, as seen by analytics software, are not unique; but these are not mentioned in the book. Also, even these are imprecise (e.g., cookies can only identify unique browsers, not unique individuals) and can violate privacy laws.
I can’t talk about the rest of the book because I’m not an expert in research, but misstating the uniqueness of IP addresses and omitting the pivotal role of cookies (and, in 2017, failing to mention fingerprinting) make the rest of the book much less credible—it makes you wonder what other errors are in the book.
On page 78, when explaining web analytics, the authors claim “users’ IP addresses” are “unique to every computer on the web”. Even if technically true at any given point in time and when network paths are considered, from a web analytics point of view this is false and has been false for at least two decades.
Even in 2006, when the first edition came out, this statement had already been factually incorrect for a few years: All computers behind a proxy share the same public IP address (i.e., you can undercount visitors, possibly by several orders of magnitude in the case of university campuses, for example), and most residential computers were already given random “dynamic” IP addresses (i.e., you can overcount and you can mix up the identities of your visitors).
(Version 1.0 of the Squid proxy ceased development in 1996, so firewalled HTTP access must have existed more than two decades ago. It’s very hard to believe anyone would claim IP addresses are “unique” even in 2006.)
I obviously can’t claim to have seen any “proprietary” analytics software. Maybe the author is talking about the military or the police, but even if that were the case they aren’t doing this by IP addresses alone (they would need to use their special powers to do things normal people aren’t allowed to do). As for the publicly available ones, I’ve never seen any take these facts into consideration, or when they do, it’s done wrong so the results are wrong.
By 2017, when the second edition came out, the world had already officially run out of IPv4 addresses for six years. Unless the authors have been misled to believe IPv6 adoption was already at 100%, it’s incredible that the authors continue to claim, in the second edition, that IP addresses are “unique” to “every computer on the web”. (Even if IPv6 adoption were at 100%, I would not claim IPv6 is “unique” even if every IPv6 address is tied to MAC addresses, since MAC addresses can be changed on some devices.)
Modern analytics partly depend on cookies and fingerprinting (even in 2006 the better analytics software depended on cookies) precisely because IP addresses, as seen by analytics software, are not unique; but these are not mentioned in the book. Also, even these are imprecise (e.g., cookies can only identify unique browsers, not unique individuals) and can violate privacy laws.
I can’t talk about the rest of the book because I’m not an expert in research, but misstating the uniqueness of IP addresses and omitting the pivotal role of cookies (and, in 2017, failing to mention fingerprinting) make the rest of the book much less credible—it makes you wonder what other errors are in the book.
February 20, 2020
This is more of a reference book - wouldn’t recommend reading it cover-to-cover.
What it’s got going for it is it’s simplicity and understandability. Unlike other research methods books (especially those relating to a social field), it doesn’t jump straight in to using technical language.
It’s not 5 stars only because it feels like a good start, but doesn’t give you more information about where to go next if you need more detail.
What it’s got going for it is it’s simplicity and understandability. Unlike other research methods books (especially those relating to a social field), it doesn’t jump straight in to using technical language.
It’s not 5 stars only because it feels like a good start, but doesn’t give you more information about where to go next if you need more detail.
October 1, 2019
clear and informative for the layman like me to understand and grasp concepts. it's more likely for me to be on the client's side, but the info here is still pertinent and interesting to consider for future comms work.
September 13, 2017
I received a free copy of this book through Goodreads Giveaways. Thank you!
This beautiful book gives a good overview of the key concepts and specific research practices that can help creative design teams deliver more effective campaigns. My favorite part of the book was the last 70 pages or so where specific examples of design campaigns are explained. Throughout the book, there are beautiful illustrations and photos that really add interest to the material. This book really serves as an introduction to this topic and will probably be most useful to beginners, although even those with some experience may enjoy looking at the projects in the back half of the book. I'm not a designer, but I still really enjoyed reading this book!
This beautiful book gives a good overview of the key concepts and specific research practices that can help creative design teams deliver more effective campaigns. My favorite part of the book was the last 70 pages or so where specific examples of design campaigns are explained. Throughout the book, there are beautiful illustrations and photos that really add interest to the material. This book really serves as an introduction to this topic and will probably be most useful to beginners, although even those with some experience may enjoy looking at the projects in the back half of the book. I'm not a designer, but I still really enjoyed reading this book!
July 30, 2018
Visually stunning with good overview of design research techniques and case studies
September 10, 2021
idk bro
September 8, 2024
Väga hea raamat neile, kes alustavad mistahes disainiõpinguid. Kõik tõed 1A4 kokkuvõtlikult, ülevaatlikult, tänapäevaselt.
November 20, 2024
A fantastic resource for designers wanting to incorporate research led approaches into their practice.
March 26, 2025
read for school. not fun reading all the way through for class but definitely a good reference book
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews