What is it that we do ?

So i recently had the opportunity to work with a client at ID, who came to us with no clear idea of what they wanted, or even what to expect. The client had already invested in agencies that conducted customer research , resulting in heavy periodic reports filled with charts and statistical information. The results of this research worked for them up until they realized that no significant new change could be perceived in customer's perception of their product anymore. They then decided to discontinue this type of research until some major changes had been made to the product, that might affect customers opinion once again. And so in the meantime they came to us. All worked well until we realized that the client still expected us to follow the old patterns that they were familiar with. Somehow we had omitted to clear the difference between traditional market research and Design research. Now its always a difficult task to explain what it is we do and how...especially with the traditional notions of 'design' clouding peoples perception. But this incident helped me to better understand and communicate the relevance of Design research . Here's a summary of what we presented:

Design research aims to gain a deeper understanding of the situation and is based in real user insights . The first difference lies in how we choose our research participants. The aim is to cover a wide spectrum of topics with a fewer participants...to dive deeper rather than spread wider. As a process, it is participant lead. Questions are purposefully left indirect, and the conversation 'flows' wherever the participant might lead it. Conversations with participants have to be supplemented with observations to account for what they do not know or omitted to tell us. Contrary to what most designers think, Design research can be both quantitative and qualitative. It can also support traditional quantitative analysis when it fails to answer the ' whys?'. And the best part is not only can it be used in beginning, but also in developing and evaluating concepts and strategies at different stages. And again the idea is to get a deeper understanding of customer behavior....the deeper our insights...more grounded the outcomes will be.