Research Design

Although the objective of our entrepreneurial education is to learn you to experiment, it's still a good idea to plan your experiments. We call it the research and design process, but it actually is a continues series of experiments. Still we believe you need to strategize en plan your experiments, it makes them so much more effective. Don't plan to long and don't try to plan everything at once, just plan-do-act-check in cycles varying from a few hours to one week.

For this course we will use "Design Thinking" as design process and in each step of the design process we will apply the appropriate research process. The main objective of this activity is to find critical assumptions and exchange them for facts.

Example of the design and research process:

Design process

step 1

Research

Strategy and

Methodology

for this phase

PDCA

Reflection

adjust strategy

Design process

step 2

Research

Strategy and

Methodology

for this phase

PDCA

Reflection

adjust strategy

Design process

step 3

Research

Strategy and

Methodology

for this phase

PDCA

Reflection

adjust strategy

Design Process:

Delimit:

  • define customer segments, regionality and nature of business and indicate level of ambition

Empathize:

  • observe and investigate at random (the Crazy Ant phase)

  • apply critical thinking to gain understanding of the problem

  • observe to understand the operational environment

Define:

  • solve the right problem by defining it

  • define the circumstances under which the problem is worth solving

Ideate:

  • imagine or conceive many solutions to solve the problem

Prototype:

  • choose the best solution and refine by prototyping

Test:

  • formulate critical path to success

  • formulate critical assumptions

  • test prototype to check assumptions

  • repeat step 2 and 3 when necessary

Execute:

  • When you have a "winner" EXECUTE!

Reasearch cycle

PLAN:

Orientation: formulate required outcome of this design phase

brainstorm

Strategy: formulate research strategy

choose methodology

substantiate choices

plan activities

DO:

Data gathering

do desk research

conduct interviews

Formulate hypothesis

analyse data

apply critical thinking

CHECK:

Test hypothesis

desk research

surveys

interviews

ACT:

Adjust hypothesis when necessary and test again

assess information

apply critical thinking

determine actual outcome of the research process

REFLECT:

Review the research process

review

reflect

act to adjust the general research strategy

Upload papers to your portfolio folder and link them to your page. You can create sub-pages to this page if necessary.

Continue: https://sites.google.com/site/moocmodules/research-for-entrepreneurs/design-thinking