The title of this talk was “How to Get Out of the Building Without Taking the Building With You” - that is, how to do design research without getting hamstrung by the presuppositions you bring to the process. Thanks to enthusiasm from my beta listeners, though, I ended up putting in a long section on design research synthesis, and in retrospect, I think a broader title would have served it better. If I do it again, I’m calling it “How to Not Suck at Design Research.”
Update: My friend Steve Portigal notes that the day we met, sharing the stage at SHIFT, he gave a talk called “Seventeen Ways to Not Suck at Research.” Clearly, a talk that made an impression! So maybe I will stick with the original name after all….
Many many thanks to the great Ryan McCarrigan of the Lean Startup Meetup and Lean Startup Machine for inviting me to talk and making the event such a pleasure to attend, and to Josh Seiden of Proof for suggesting that I try giving an Ignite talk in the first place. The constraints of the form - 5 minute talk with a slide change every 15 seconds, whether you’re ready for it or not - are terrifying, but as any good designer knows, constraints can help with creativity, and the talk was a joy to create.