| To develop projects in support of our research priorities the DMI research strategy is multi-method. Although the Institute is a relatively small organization, we will seek to sponsor research, conduct research, secure research funding, and partner on research projects in the following ways:
DMI conducted research
Member sample
Quantitative, qualitative, group discussion
Non-member sample
Quantitative, qualitative, group discussion
Other
Partner research
Partner with academic organizations
Partner with country design councils
Duplicate quantitative research per country, comparative
Partner with professional associations
Syndicated research
DMI member collaboration, sponsorships
DMI Sponsored student research
Student research grants
Top Tier Priorities:
1. Design Value Research
This research is already well underway. Initial results indicate:
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50% of responses are from people who work in companies with over 1000 employees.
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Respondents work in companies in these top 5 categories: Academia, CPG, Health Care, Manufacturing & Service industries
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52% of respondents indicate Design reports directly to C-Level with centralized leadership and resources.
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48% of respondents describe their culture as analytical; 55% describe the metrics used to evaluate design as subjective.
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Respondents are using a variety of references to help define the appropriate metrics for their organization without one direction being prevalent within the data
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Respondent’s organizations use a combination of qualitative and quantitative metrics to evaluate design, citing a “cultural approach”. Sales, product, brand and customer satisfaction are frequently recurring terms.
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Several respondents cited “good examples” of specific metrics they find valuable to measure design contributions
To take the survey go here: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/designvalueproject
DMI is seeking several additional volunteers to administer, analyze and document survey results. If you’re interested in participating, please contact Steve Sato by May 20. Be an important process of proving the value of design. Join the team and participate!
2. DMI: FuturED: Defining Design Management & Design Thinking for the 21st Century
Other Research Topics
While the top research priorities will play a leading role in selecting proposals and papers, high-quality work on other topics is also of interest, particularly in new or emerging areas relevant to design management. DMI encourages cross-disciplinary, cross-functional, and cross-cultural research perspectives. We will generally encourage empirical work over conceptual work, and encourage comparative studies, case studies, best practice field experiments, model building, and theory development. We encourage cross-disciplinary work building on research results, practice results, and methods from disciplines directly relevant to design and design management. DMI strongly endorses using actual consumers, customers, and executives rather than student subjects in research projects. Our belief is that practitioners, design councils and academics can mutually benefit from interacting throughout the process of planning, conducting, and reporting research. When projects are completed, our intent is to encourage researchers to present their results at DMI Forums, and publish their findings for DMI members, in the DMI Academic Journal, the DMI Design Management Review, and other DMI media channels.
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