Categorising design methods: How designers view the roles of user methods in design

Methods for involving and understanding users are of key importance for effective and inclusive design. However, many of these methods have had limited uptake, due in part to a poor fit with the ways in which designers think and work. We therefore conducted a card-sorting study with twenty-one product and communications designers, examining their views of design methods in general, and user methods in particular. The study was analysed using hierarchical agglomerative cluster analysis. In this paper, we present some of the initial results, describing the main categories of design methods used and discussing the designers' views of the roles of user methods in design.