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Design research in Brazil

Bas Raijmakers — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 11:06:53 +0000

Geke and Bas are now almost a week in Brazil, travelling across the country visiting friends at our partner company Feel the Future and elsewhere. The vibe in Brazil is different from Europe we feel, in that their is a clear understanding here that the economy needs innovation to spur its growth, and that design has to play a vital role in that growth. In Europe we are more focused on repair at the moment it seems which makes the mood a bit defensive. Companies like Feel The Future, our Brazilian Reach partner, but also architectural practices we visited, show there is a real understanding that design can do much more than just make things. It can help change things by playing a strategic role in innovation.

Brazil seems to be at a tipping point regarding the role design plays in society and the economy. There is a real understanding that it makes a lot of sense to bring different disciplines, such as business people, engineers, marketers, social researchers, architecture and all kinds of designers, together to spur innovation. But at the same time there is not a real understanding nor practical experience of how they would collaborate and make innovation happen. This is where Design Thinking and Service Design come in, and companies like Feel The Future can make a real difference by simply doing these things with brave clients who want to experiment with new ways of working. Good luck to them!

Tonight we will be speaking at N2010 in Curitiba where 5000 (!) design students from all over Brazil have gathered to workshop, discuss and celebrate design as a tool to move their society and economy forward. This is an impressive initiative from students themselves, that we would love to see happen in Europe too. Superfriendly as the Brazilians we meet are, they immediately offered to help if Europeans would take such an initiative. Any students who want to take them up on that offer?

Presentation at N2010 in Brazil STBY Co-founder and Strategy Director Bas Raijmakers will be in...
Presentation at ‘Creatie van Waarde’ On 28 June Bas Raijmakers presented two case studies of...
Reach: Global Design Research Network Reach is an network of highly skilled and experienced companies...

Presentation at N2010 in Brazil

Luke — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 08:39:15 +0000

STBY Co-founder and Strategy Director Bas Raijmakers will be in Brazil this July speaking at the N2010 design festival. N2010, or the National Meeting of Students of Design, is this year celebrating its 20th anniversary by returning to Curitiba, the site of the first meeting in 1991. The event brings together students and academics in order to provide a forum for the articulation, exchange, and integration of Brazilian design thinking. Bas will be at the event as a speaker on July 15th.

Design research in Brazil Geke and Bas are now almost a week in Brazil,...
Presentation at ‘Creatie van Waarde’ On 28 June Bas Raijmakers presented two case studies of...
Presentation at Emerce E-Day Geke van Dijk and Julia Leihener (Creation Center Deutche Telekom)...

Reach partners meeting up

Geke — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 16:48:51 +0000

Our colleagues and friends from Apogee in Hong Kong, Jo Wong and Daniel Szuk, visited us in London this week. It was really lovely to have them around at the studio for a day and to engage in all sorts of interesting discussions over lunch. Wish this could happen more often…

As partners in the Reach network we do have regular contact by email and skype about proposals and projects, but nothing beats a good old face to face meeting to go into depth on fresh ideas and lateral thoughts. Thanks for coming by guys!

Presentation at N2010 in Brazil STBY Co-founder and Strategy Director Bas Raijmakers will be in...
STBY in Touchpoint STBY’s Strategy Director Geke Van Dijk has contributed an article...
Reach: Global Design Research Network Reach is an network of highly skilled and experienced companies...

Global Design Research

Geke — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 11:08:57 +0000

Being known as a world-class specialist in Design Research (short for ‘design-led customer research’), many of our clients have asked us to deliver this kind of research on an international scale. Rather than developing this as an in-house service, we have initiated a global network with other specialists in design research around the world. These are small companies like STBY with a proven track record and working with highly senior staff. This way we can garantee a very high quality of local data collection and collaborative insight generation. In our experience this is far better way of conducting international research than travelling to the international sites ourselves and make do with interviews through local translators and freelance researchers.

The international network we have set up is called ‘REACH – the global design research network’. The network currently consists of 9 members companies, covering 11 countries around the world. We epect the network to further expand over the coming years. See the Reach website for all the details: www.globaldesignresearch.com

The Design Research we do through the network can be described as a combination of two approaches:

Understanding people’s practices to drive innovation
Understanding the people and situations you design for is crucial for successful innovation. These insights only come from spending time with your customers, and developing empathic conversations with them. When presented in an inspiring, visual way such insights are a strong driver of innovation.

Bringing design skills into customer research
Design skills such as generating, modeling and prototyping new ideas are crucial for successful innovation. If these skills are already used in immersive field work and insight creation, the resulting innovative ideas are rooted strongly in the markets your company innovates for.

Reach: Global Design Research Network Reach is an network of highly skilled and experienced companies...
Design research in Brazil Geke and Bas are now almost a week in Brazil,...
Global Innovation Group For clients who are looking for full service innovation projects,...

Global Design Research Network

Bas Raijmakers — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:41:00 +0000

As many clients have asked us for research that covers local situations in many different countries, we thought that it would be good to formalize our network of design researchers around the world. Over the years we’ve built up an extensive network of people who work as as design researchers in different places around the world. We always have a great time exchanging knowledge and experiences, and sometimes we help each other out as partners in international researches. So why not make this existing network more visible and accessible for our clients? It seemed the natural thing to do.

The members of the Global Design Research Network are all highly skilled and experienced design researchers. They are all familiar with both creative processes and ethnographic research. So far we have members in the following countries: Brazil, United States, Japan, India, Italy, Spain, France, United Kingdom, The Netherlands. Other areas that will soon be included as well are China, Russia, Australia, and Africa (we know, the last is not a country, but a continent, sorry!)

We are currently setting up an online platform where we can safely share materials between us. And also an online presence to communicate our network to anyone who is interested. This site will have links to all the members so you can easily find out about our portfolios.

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