Written by: Jiwon Lee / 8/16/2024

Design Research: The Hidden Key to Successful Business

Hello, this is the Insightiful team. Today, we'll explore how design research leads to business success and examine its power through real-world cases.

The Impact of Design Research on Business

Many companies misunderstand design research as simply a process of decorating a product’s appearance. However, design research can actually be the core of business strategy. Why is that?

  1. Customer-Centric Approach: Design research allows for a deep understanding of customers’ actual needs and behavior patterns. This is essential for improving products and services with a customer focus.
  2. Driver of Innovation: By discovering users’ hidden needs, you can obtain innovative ideas that can lead the market.
  3. Risk Reduction: By pre-testing user reactions before launch, you can greatly reduce the risk of failure.
  4. Increased Efficiency: Improving user experience leads to higher customer satisfaction, which in turn leads to increased business efficiency.
Design Research: The Hidden Key to Successful Business

The Power of Design Research: Real-World Cases

  1. Airbnb’s Case Initially, Airbnb faced the problem of low booking rates. The design research team observed and analyzed users’ actual behaviors. As a result, they discovered that the quality of photos uploaded by hosts greatly influenced booking rates. Based on this, Airbnb began providing professional photography services to hosts, which led to a dramatic increase in booking rates.
  • If Insightiful was used: Through our real-time data analysis feature, the correlation between photo quality and booking rates could have been discovered faster.
  1. Netflix’s Personalized Recommendation System Netflix deeply studied users’ viewing behaviors. Through this, they developed a personalized recommendation system, which became Netflix’s core competitiveness. They understood users’ content consumption patterns through design research and reflected this in their algorithm.
  • If Insightiful was used: Using our various research tools, we could have more accurately identified users’ viewing habits and preferences.
  1. Nike’s Nike+ Nike wanted to make shoes not just a product to wear, but part of the exercise experience. As a result of deeply understanding runners’ needs through design research, they created the innovative product Nike+. This combined shoes with digital technology to provide new value to runners.
  • If Insightiful was used: Through our AI-assisted research design feature, we could have more effectively uncovered the diverse needs of runners.

Start Your Own Design Research with Insightiful

As seen in the above cases, design research can be a powerful tool that determines the success of a business. However, many companies, especially small businesses and startups, find it difficult to conduct professional design research. This is due to lack of time, cost, and expert personnel.

Insightiful aims to lower these barriers. Through our platform, anyone can easily and effectively conduct design research.

  1. Various Research Methodologies: You can easily utilize various research methods such as surveys, interviews, and usability tests.
  2. AI-Supported Analysis: Even complex data can be easily interpreted with the help of AI.
  3. Real-time Insights: You can receive meaningful insights as soon as data is collected.
  4. Collaboration Features: You can easily share results and discuss with team members.

Design Research, Your Key to Business Success

Design research is no longer the exclusive domain of large corporations. In businesses of all sizes and in all industries, design research can be the driving force for innovation and growth.

What problems need to be solved in your business? Are you accurately grasping customer needs? Is there room to improve the usability of your products or services? The answers to all these questions can be found in design research.

With Insightiful, you too can become the protagonist of success stories like Airbnb, Netflix, and Nike. Start your own design research journey now. Amazing insights that will take your business to the next level are waiting for you!