Design research groups

One criticism levelled at trends research is that future trends are sometimes researched in isolation of design thinking, with design thinking applied only after a trend has been identified. In order to bring design thinking closer to new business areas, product opportunities and user needs, several businesses have set up design research units whose main purpose is to generate new ideas alongside design thinking 

The Design Innovation Team at Yahoo! in San Francisco functions as an off-site incubation centre for designers on sabbatical from project work, allowing them to actively experiment, create and design for a period of three to six months. As such, it stands slightly removed from the design and project work conducted within Yahoo!, but can still yield ideas for products and services that are then exploited within Yahoo! at a later stage.

In other cases, externally commissioned designers are brought in to generate ideas for the business, such as in Xerox’s Design Research Group, based in the US. The designers commissioned by this group generate ideas through research with customers and focus on visual identity, such as colour and finishing trends.

At Virgin Atlantic Airways, the design team works in a more informal manner with the Research & Development group to access future thinking and ideas that may prove useful to their design solutions.