Design as research.
In a world where our lives are constantly measured in metrics, analytics and data we need to design for people – not types.
Design is part of people’s everyday lives, thoughts and actions. It shapes and prompts, inspires and enables people to live a better life.
For design to respond appropriately we need to know exactly who we are designing for.
How do people think?
What do they value?
What would help to make their lives better?
The goal of design research is to generate an in-depth understanding of human centred experiences and needs.
A creative approach to problem solving uses innovative ways of exploring about human centred needs. From this direct actionable outputs are more like to emerge.
Human-centred research wholly focuses on the individual’s experience. It is about how they engage with the world.
Design research looks at qualitative and environmental responses. It puts a lens on unique characteristics, of diversity and quirkiness, and explores how these might be significant.
It is a process that uses critical skills of listening, observation and empathy to identify the subtle and unique context of that relationship.
Anyone At Home features stories of everyday lives, in everyday spaces. It is about who we are and how we live today.
These are personal stories.
They relate to a specific time, space and place as lives lived in homes shaped within a particular social, cultural, political, economic, technological and spatial sphere.
Each story reminds us that as our own story enfolds the world in which we live is constantly changing. What people say and experience today may be very different tomorrow.
This project produces evidence, insights and knowledge that cannot be found elsewhere.
This website was developed from my own natural sense of curiosity and constant questioning. It is who we are, and how we are, within a world that is part of a much bigger picture.
It is when we know how and where things fit – or not – that active and real insights will emerge. These can then be further developed/ researched into a more defined research strategy, purposefully aligned.
Creative thinking is essential to business and industry. Innovation comes from an open mind. To that end, knowledge that comes from different ways of seeing is key.
Any one of these stories could become my/your/our story.
These are the stories of people at a various stages of life living in circumstances and situations that we may be yet to encounter – or where we have been before.
There are stories of inspiration and fortitude- but mostly of the everyday.
They are people who don’t see themselves as extraordinary and yet each story is unique – as is the space they have made as their home.
As we age and enter different lifestages it is reassuring to know how it is for other people in similar situations. We can learn from their experience and be more prepared – or at least recognise that we are not alone in how we feel and what we do.