Making Meaning Out Of Data: The Art Of Design Synthesis

In a useful article from Co.Design, Jon Kolko, Executive Director of Design Strategy at Thinktiv and author of Exposing the Magic of Design explains the process of design synthesis. He offers three tactics that can help you go from a mountain of raw data to actionable knowledge. Kolko says:

Without a formal strategy and approach to synthesis, experienced designers rely on their intuition, built up over years of trial and error. “Just trust me,” says the old-guard, and the discipline of design loses credibility. Worse, younger designers flail and waste precious time, becoming frustrated and ultimately rejecting the ethnographic research methods themselves. Yet it isn’t the research methods that are at fault, as research itself does not produce new ideas. The approaches to incubation and translation can be formalized, and to do so offers a great service to designers who are struggling to work through increasingly complicated problems in business and culture. During design synthesis, truly revolutionary innovations emerge.

Co.Design: “How Do You Transform Good Research Into Great Innovations?”

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