Design Research for Media Development: A Guide for Practitioners

"Design research is useful whether you are designing an iPhone in Palo Alto or a media development program in Pakistan. But for projects like the latter - whose designers often come from vastly different backgrounds than their users, and where the context is extremely complex - developing empathy and understanding requires greater effort and unique skill sets."

This is a hands-on reference guide for media development practitioners to integrate design research into their work, featuring a running case study from Pakistan. Design research is defined here as a research and analytical process that combines ethnographic, journalistic, and systems thinking approaches. The guide is based on principles and practices of design research that have been long used by the private sector, and it is grounded in the experience that Reboot, a social impact firm dedicated to inclusive development and accountable governance, has gathered in designing and implementing international development projects around the world.

The guide was born out of a collaboration between Reboot and Internews, through its Center for Innovation and Learning and its Pakistan Country Office. Together, the organisations sought to understand the complexity of the information ecosystem in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) region of Pakistan, with the ultimate goal of designing contextually appropriate programmes that improve access to information. A design research investigation was conducted over 4 weeks in September 2012. Given FATA's communications landscape and its population's low literacy rates, Internews was interested in the potential of interactive voice response (IVR) technology to get information about political processes to FATA communities, particularly around the upcoming elections. But as teams began planning such an initiative, they realised they needed answers to a few key questions to enable strong programme design. This resource is an effort to share the process that followed in the hopes that it will inspire practice and discussion and have an impact far beyond the immediate goals of the collaboration.

There are 5 key phases in the design research process. Chapters in the guide explain each of these in detail, along with practical advice and case studies. The phases include:

1. Define - Articulate a programme's ultimate objective and define the questions that must be answered to help achieve it. Set clear goals to establish boundaries for what falls outside immediate relevance or current capacity.
2. Plan - Develop an intellectual framework for information that is needed to meet the design challenge, as well as an operational plan for how to get that information.
3. Collect - Work to understand the people the programme seeks to serve and the actors that will be serving them. Dive into the context.
4. Synthesise - Make sense of the research, drawing patterns and insights from the data. Ensure that findings are useful and actionable for programme design.
5. Design - Distill findings into programme design recommendations and guidelines for use by the implementing team. It is also helpful to present findings in a format accessible to wider audiences to benefit the larger community of practice.

The hope is that this guide will help practitioners integrate design research principles and practices naturally into their existing work, stretch their creativity, and find new solutions. To that end, throughout this guide, several special features are offered to help media development practitioners better understand and implement design research. For example, "FATA in Focus" features real-life examples to illustrate design research principles in action. They show how the approach both requires adaptability to context and offers rich contextual insights. Tools signal a resource to help practitioners implement the design research process; sample templates and examples from the Internews Pakistan Case Study can be found in a dedicated section of the Harnessing Design for Media Development website. This companion website for the guide serves as a repository of resources to support practitioners integrating design research into their work.