Methods

Name: KITE Design Research GmbH
Price range: $

A

Actor-Network Mapping : Actor-network mapping visualizes the relationships between people, technologies, organizations, and other influential actors within a system. It helps uncover power dynamics, dependencies, and unintended consequences by showing how each actor influences others. This method is especially useful in complex design ecosystems, guiding more informed interventions based on the interplay of social and technical forces.
Adaptive Scenarios: Adaptive scenarios are flexible, narrative-based situations that evolve based on user decisions. They’re used to simulate dynamic systems, uncover user priorities, or test reactions to changing conditions. This method helps us explore how users navigate uncertainty or complexity, making it valuable for future planning, or systems with multiple touchpoints or paths.
Affinity Diagraming : Affinity diagraming is a visual technique for organizing information, typically using sticky notes on a wall or board. Team members write down observations and ideas, then collaboratively group them by similarity. This process helps uncover patterns and relationships in the data. It’s widely used after user research to synthesize findings and generate insights that guide the next steps in the design process.

B

Bodystorming: Bodystorming is an immersive method where participants physically act out scenarios or interactions in real-world or simulated environments. This approach helps designers explore user experiences through embodied action, uncovering issues that might not surface through discussion or observation alone. It’s especially useful for service and spatial design, or physical products.

C

Card Sorting : Card sorting is a method used to understand how users naturally group and label information. Participants are given a set of topics or features—often written on cards—and asked to organize them into categories that make sense to them. This helps designers structure content, navigation, or menus in ways that align with users’ expectations, improving the overall usability of products or services.
Co-Creation Workshop : A co-creation workshop actively involves users, stakeholders, and designers in the development of products, processes, or services. Rather than being designed for users, solutions are developed with them through collaborative processes. By sharing knowledge and experiences in a structured setting, this process leads to more relevant, inclusive, and user-centered outcomes that are grounded in real-world needs.
Concept Prototyping: Concept prototyping involves creating low-fidelity representations of ideas—such as paper sketches, simple wireframes, or rough physical models—to explore and communicate early concepts. These quick prototypes help teams test basic functionality, spark discussion, and gather initial feedback before investing in detailed design or development, therefore reducing the risk of pursuing unworkable ideas.
Contextual Inquiry: Contextual inquiry is a field research method that combines observation with in-the-moment interviews. Participants are observed in their real environment as they carry out tasks, while the researcher asks questions to understand what’s happening and why. This approach reveals goals, mental models, and hidden challenges that wouldn’t surface in interviews alone.
Critical Incident Technique: The Critical Incident Technique focuses on analysing specific events where a system or product performed exceptionally well or failed significantly. These extreme moments highlight friction points, vulnerabilities, or hidden user needs. This method supports deeper insight into real-world risks and helps teams prioritise design improvements based on lived experience.
Cultural Probes : Cultural probes are open-ended tools—like diaries, cameras, or artifact kits—given to users to document their lives, thoughts, or surroundings. These materials help create personal insights by capturing emotional, or unspoken aspects of user experience. Often used in exploratory or early-stage research, this method reveals deep cultural context and personal meaning that might otherwise go unnoticed.

D

Design Sprints: Design sprints are intensive, time-boxed formats for rapidly exploring challenges and testing design solutions. They bring together interdisciplinary teams to align perspectives, prototype ideas, and gather early feedback. The sprint format creates space for iterative thinking, quick validation, and collective creativity and is especially useful when a project needs momentum or a shared vision to move from idea to actionable next steps.
Desk Research : Desk research involves collecting and analysing existing information from secondary sources such as articles, reports, academic studies, databases, and websites. Often used in the early stages of a project, it helps build contextual understanding, benchmark existing solutions, and uncover gaps or opportunities. As a cost-effective starting point, desk research lays the foundation for more targeted fieldwork in the further stages of the project.
Dragon Dreaming : Dragon Dreaming is a collaborative project design and management method rooted in sustainability, community values, and holistic thinking. It follows four phases—Dreaming, Planning, Doing, and Celebrating—and encourages shared ownership, deep listening, and collective visioning. It’s particularly useful for projects that aim to balance social, environmental, and personal growth with creative outcomes.

E

Expert Review: Expert review is a usability evaluation method where specialists assess a product based on their knowledge of design principles and user experience best practices. It identifies usability flaws, accessibility issues, and design inconsistencies. This method is cost-effective and fast, offering actionable recommendations that complement user testing and support iterative improvements throughout the design lifecycle.

F

Focus Groups : Focus groups gather a small group of participants to discuss their perceptions, needs, or reactions to a concept, product, or issue. Guided by a moderator, the group dynamic can reveal diverse viewpoints, spark debate, and surface collective preferences or tensions. While not statistically representative, focus groups are valuable for exploring attitudes and testing early ideas, especially when seeking emotional or social insights.
Futures Wheel: The Futures Wheel is a method for mapping out first-, second-, and third-order consequences of a new technology or decision. It visually explores ripple effects and cascading impacts by branching outward from a central change. This method supports long-term thinking, helps uncover indirect externalities, and sharpens awareness of systemic risks and unintended outcomes.

H

Heuristic Evaluation: Heuristic evaluation involves usability experts reviewing a product or interface against established usability principles—called heuristics. This method identifies common usability issues without user testing. It’s useful for early-stage feedback and isn't used as a singular source of insights. Rather, it complements other evaluation methods because, while subjective, the insights gained can help prioritize improvements and ensure baseline usability is addressed before further testing.
High-Fidelity Prototyping: High-fidelity prototyping involves detailed, realistic representations of a product—often interactive digital mockups or refined physical models. These prototypes closely resemble the final product in appearance, behavior, and functionality, making them suitable for usability testing, stakeholder presentations, or pre-launch validation. They help teams evaluate fine details, simulate real interactions, and ensure that design decisions are ready for implementation.

I

Ideation Workshop : An ideation workshop is a collaborative session that brings together stakeholders—such as designers, clients, and users—to generate ideas around a defined challenge. Using structured creativity techniques like brainstorming, mind mapping, or sketching, participants explore multiple possibilities. The goal is not to find a single solution, but to expand the idea space and encourage creative thinking that informs later design stages.
Impact Mapping: Impact Mapping is a structured method for visualising how a technology or intervention leads to intended outcomes and impacts. It clarifies the chain from inputs and activities to short- and long-term effects, making assumptions transparent. This method supports strategic alignment, reveals gaps or unintended consequences, and provides a shared framework for evaluating risks, accountability, and externalities.
Interactive prototypes: Interactive prototypes make ideas tangible. They simulate functions, interfaces, or experiences in a way that users and stakeholders can directly engage with. From clickable wireframes to physical mock-ups, this method enables quick feedback, reveals usability issues, and supports co-creative iteration.
Interviews : Interviews involve one-on-one conversations with users or stakeholders to explore needs, motivations, behaviors, and experiences. They can be structured, semi-structured or open-ended, and offer deep, qualitative insights that numbers alone can't reveal. Interviews help designers understand context, validate assumptions, and shape user-centered solutions based on real stories and perspectives.

M

Mockups: Mockups are high-fidelity visual representations of a product’s interface, used to communicate look, feel, and layout. Unlike wireframes, they include colors, typography, and branding. Mockups help stakeholders and developers visualize the final product, offer feedback, and align on visual details before building begins. They’re often used to test visual hierarchy, user expectations, and aesthetic appeal before final implementation.

P

Participatory Field Formats: Participative formats like audiowalks invite users to engage physically and emotionally with environments and narratives. These methods often blend storytelling, reflection, and movement to surface grounded, place-based insights. They are useful for exploring spatial experiences, evoking memory or imagination, and gathering feedback in a contextualised, embodied way—beyond traditional interview settings.
Personas: Personas are fictional but research-based representations of user types, summarizing key behaviors, goals, and pain points. They humanize user data, helping design teams maintain focus on real needs throughout the process. Personas often include demographic estimates, context, and quotes to make them relatable. They’re used to guide decisions, prioritize features, and foster empathy—ensuring solutions are tailored to actual user motivations.
Process Visualisation: Process visualisation is the practice of turning complex systems, workflows, and roles into clear, accessible visuals. It helps make invisible structures visible—whether through patient journeys, movement patterns, or infographics. This method supports shared understanding, reveals pain points or gaps, and creates a common basis for discussion and decision-making across disciplines.

R

Rainbow Spreadsheet: Rainbow spreadsheets are collaborative tools for organizing and analyzing qualitative research, especially interview or usability data. Each row represents a participant, and each column a theme, prompt, or step. Color-coded highlights make patterns, overlaps, and outliers visible at a glance. This method supports fast, transparent synthesis across teams, making it especially useful in early discovery phases and co-analysis workshops.
Roleplay: Roleplay involves participants acting out scenarios connected to a product, service, or situation. By stepping into different roles, participants explore behaviors, emotions, and interactions in a tangible way. This method helps surface unspoken needs, challenge assumptions, and build empathy across teams. It’s especially valuable in service design and participatory research, where understanding context, dynamics, and lived experience is essential.

S

Speculative Design : Speculative design explores possible futures by creating fictional products, scenarios, or systems. It challenges current assumptions and sparks discussion around emerging technologies, ethics, or societal change. Rather than solving immediate problems, it helps provoke reflection, surface values, and engage people in imagining alternatives. It's often used in workshops, exhibitions, or strategic foresight work.
Stakeholder Mapping : Stakeholder mapping identifies and organizes all parties affected by or involved in a project. By assessing influence, interest, and relationships, this method helps prioritize engagement strategies and ensure no key perspectives are overlooked. It supports more inclusive, transparent design processes and aligns communication by clarifying who to involve, when, and how—especially in multi-stakeholder or high-impact contexts.
Storytelling / Narrative : This method uses immersive storytelling or gamified environments like escape rooms to simulate real-life challenges and explore user reactions. Participants navigate narratives that embed design questions or problems, revealing how they think, feel, and act under pressure. This method helps to uncover deeper insights within test complex systems, and engage stakeholders in a memorable, participatory experience.
Surveys: Surveys are structured tools for collecting feedback, opinions, or behavioral data from a larger group of participants. They can include open-ended questions, rating scales, or multiple-choice formats, and are often used to validate assumptions, measure satisfaction, or compare experiences across user groups. Standardised questionnaires, such as the System Usability Scale or the User Experience Questionnaire, provide reliable benchmarks and make it easier to compare results over time or across projects.
System Mapping : System mapping is a visual method for exploring the elements, actors, and interactions that make up a complex system. It helps us to identify leverage points, bottlenecks, and unintended effects. By mapping inputs, outputs, and feedback loops, this technique reveals how components are interrelated—supporting holistic problem-solving and more sustainable, informed design decisions across products, services, and processes.

T

Thematic Analysis: Thematic analysis is a sense-making method used to organise raw data—such as user quotes, notes, or observations—into larger thematic clusters. By identifying recurring topics or patterns, teams can translate scattered findings into structured insights. It’s often used after field research to uncover key issues, user needs, or design opportunities, and to support the development of frameworks, personas, or strategic directions.

U

Usability Testing : User testing evaluates how real people interact with a product, interface, or prototype. Participants are asked to complete specific tasks while observers note any difficulties, confusion, or friction points. This method identifies usability issues and validates design decisions by focusing on actual user behavior. Testing helps ensure that the final product is intuitive, efficient, and aligned with users' expectations and needs.
User Journey Mapping : User journey mapping visualises the steps a user takes when interacting with a product, service, or system. It highlights actions, emotions, and pain points across all touchpoints—from first contact to completion. This method helps teams understand the experience from the user’s perspective, identify gaps or opportunities, and build a shared understanding of the overall journey.

V

Value Source Analysis: Value Source Analysis investigates the underlying values that shape the development and impact of a technology. It explores whose interests are reflected, whose voices are missing, and what ethical tensions may arise. This method fosters responsible innovation, strengthens inclusion, and makes it easier to anticipate social resistance or moral risks.
Video-Based Analysis: Video analysis involves recording and reviewing user interactions, environments, or behaviors to gain deep insights. It allows designers to observe subtle actions, gestures, or social dynamics that might be missed in real time. This method is useful for identifying patterns, validating assumptions, or supporting team discussions with visual evidence. It’s especially powerful in field research and usability studies.

W

Wireframing: Wireframing involves creating simplified, low-fidelity representations of a user interface to explore layout, structure, and functionality. These visual blueprints help align teams and stakeholders early in the design process and allow to rapidly test ideas. Wireframes focus on content placement and interaction flow rather than aesthetics, making them ideal for identifying usability issues before investing in detailed design or development.
Wizard-of-Oz : In Wizard-of-Oz testing, users interact with a prototype that seems functional, but is actually operated manually behind the scenes—like a human simulating system responses. This allows teams to test complex or AI-driven ideas without building full systems. It’s useful for evaluating user expectations and behaviors early on, particularly when designing services, voice interfaces, or smart technologies.