Customer research

We specialise in a multi-modal qualitative, ethnographic approach called design research. At its essence, design research takes anthropological tools for understanding people and context and combines them with the creative, generative tools traditionally used in product and service design.

Rather than rigid, closed questionnaires, we use flexible semi-structured interviews and rapid ethnographies to help us explore a much broader question space and design space. We combine this with literature research and a global lateral inspiration gathering exercise.

This approach was first popularised by fast-moving-consumer goods companies like Proctor & Gamble and has since spread to places like the d.school at Stanford and the most innovative for-profit and not-for-profit organisations around the world.

Design research is particularly useful in changing contexts when we need to generate new options or when we don’t know what we don’t know.