Page 198 - Educational Technology A Primer for the 21st Century

12.2 The Framework of Design Methodology 191

Fig. 12.1 Framework of design methodology

relevant to this problem. After analyzing the target users’ demands and interests of
the stakeholders, the designers can diversify, select, and improve their designs.
Next, specific to a particular industry and the potential product(s), designers will
perform “competitive product analysis” and “scenario analysis” based on the
original demand, which includes learning if there is any ready-made solution and
what its vulnerabilities are and what can be improved. On the strength of the
preliminary design, designers will build users’ daily (no solutions) behavior sce-
narios, mine user pain points, construct the various product application scenarios. In
such a concrete process, the design is constantly improved to perfection.
Based on a full analysis of these aspects, designers will integrate a function list,
or preliminary solution plan list aiming at the original demand. Finally, based on the
“function list” and the original demand, the designers refer to the original demands
again, consider the design purpose, and select the most proper and feasible solution
to this demand.
No matter what solution plan it is, as a designer, you should never forget to ask
yourself: What kind of value does my solution plan (which can also be called the
product) create for the user? Or what is the value proposition of this product? The
whole process is a design process of focusing on problems, diverging problems, and
focusing on problems again. Under the ideal circumstances, this design process is a
continuous, repeated, and endless problem-solving process. When thought of in this
manner, design research is a kind of specialized formative evaluation effort.