ALL 3 MUST BE DONE WHEN THE PRESENTATION IS GIVEN!

When you start out to do research… you first make a decision of “what” you’re going to do. This means you’ve made a decision about the nature of the problem that you’re trying to answer… what sorts of methods / tools will you use?

You will have some sort of philosophical view of the nature of knowledge.

When you say “I will do a survey!” you are making a philosophical statement. You’re saying something about the problem you’re solving… how you will solve that problem… the survey is a method that will allow you to learn certain things about reality.

Sometimes though, if you don’t pick the right type of research to answer the right sort of question, you won’t really accomplish anything at all with the method (for example, using a survey if you really should do a focus group.)

So, you have “problem,” or a “mystery.” Then, you can turn that problem into a question, and you can look at it from the direction of “what sort of information do I need to answer that question. Which then leads to the step of “how can I get the information I need to answer that question?” Finally, you have to figure out how you do all of that.

In design, typically, you want to try to do research the same way that a scientist might: be objective!!! Get much better results that way… although… its not necessarily the same “type” of research that a scientist would do. The better the research, the higher the quality, the better your argument will be for validating your design. “We know that its valid because of these things we’ve done.” If you say, “well, I met this guy once that told me a thing or two and I based my design on that,” you don’t really prove your case or your design.

Erik wants us to be able to describe how we are doing research and tie it into the first chapter of Research Design (3rd Edition) in our December report. “Why do you want to do a survey?” “Why do you want to do a focus group?” Tie it back into this book to make the argument that much stronger!

• A presentation that you will give to a group of people
• Investors
• Friends
• Your Mom (Marty is talking about our moms =( )
• Someone who will contribute in some way
• What’s Critical!
• Story
• “The Heroes Journey”



1. Leave Home
2. Face a Challenge
3. Return “Home” a different person
• A Good Intro
• Help the clarity of your thinking… A clear pitch leads to a clear plan leads to a plan for moving forward
• What’s the Goal of the pitch?
• Get them interested!
• What are Traps?
• Over promising… can lead to being ridiculousness
• That you know so much more about your idea than they do, they you start making assumptions about what they do and don’t know
• You CAN’T assume they know anything

• It’s Important to be reading in Wired and or Fast Company as interviewers / recruiters are reading those same articles. Its good to know what they know. Its good to be able to see what they think about design.

Just for the record:
Capstone Proposal. Your proposal is an outline of your research and development plan. It must include: your name, a working title for your project, a target interest group, a brief description of the “problem space” and why it’s important (e.g., potential impact ― social, economic, educational, entertainment, etc.), early predispositions, references, and a preliminary plan including timeline for literature review, observations (user studies), insights, concepts, prototype, usability studies, business or economic strategies. Normal expectation is that your proposal will be about two pages and be completed by September 30th. Plan has to be delivered to the CIs.