Design Research

I’ve had the opportunity not only to create designs, but execute design research as well. This has taught me that research is a very important part of the design process. In addition to design research conducted at the front end of every class I’ve taken, I’ve also taken two semesters of design research classes, including one taught by the fabulous Dr. Liz Sanders. She taught all about human-centered co-design—which is designing with people, not just for people. We learned and practiced a variety of different research methods before completing a 10-week research project. My research project was on privacy in The Ohio State University dorms. My group had participants complete a number of activities anonymously to help us gauge their feelings on privacy in the dorms. These activities included a general survey, a floor plan strong/pain point mapping activity, a “do’s” and “don’ts” list, etc.. What our research boiled down to is that people don’t like to share and dorms are built as shared spaces so this is problematic in terms of privacy because there isn’t really any. Two deliverables of our findings were a “Privacy in the Dorms for Dummies” book, and a top 5 insight page.

Additionally, I received a Research Distinction for my degree in Visual Communication Design for the research work I conducted for my senior thesis project. This work is published in The Ohio State University’s Knowledge Bank here.