Research initiatives
ID's research goal is to develop methods that will help organizations gain a more detailed and relevant understanding of users' increasingly complex lives, and drive the development of innovative and humane products and business concepts.
In recent years, organizations' knowledge of how to make new products, communications, and services has grown tremendously. The decreasing costs of computing, the ability to embed computing into physical products, and the ability to create value by connecting products and services via networks, have exponentially increased the variety of offerings a company can create.
At the same time, organizations have a decreased ability to predict how consumers will use these new offerings. Twenty years ago it was possible to predict the general patterns of how people worked, learned, played, managed family life, and kept healthy. Today people have many more lifestyle options, making the old methods of market segmentation and demographic studies less reliable. The global economy has exacerbated this situation -- not only are patterns of living becoming less predictable, but cross-cultural differences are becoming subtler as well.
This growing gap between the increased knowledge of how to create offerings, and decreased understanding of the patterns of daily life, has left executives in a precarious situation. Organizations that know how to make just about anything find they are not certain about what to make.
Context Sensitive Interactive Systems
Develops methods to observe, capture, describe, analyze, assess, manage and control context research that can be used to design context-sensitive products, systems and environments. ...more
Design for the Base of the Pyramid
Patrick Whitney
Judith Gregory
Ash Bhoopathy
Kevin Denney
The proportion of the world's urban population living in slums is projected to increase from 33% in 2003 to 45% in 2025. If the growth of these areas is left unchecked, they will soon be home to th...more
Global Companies in Local Markets
Global Companies in Local Markets (GCLM) is a research consortium at ID dealing with methods for helping global companies gain specific insights for innovation in culturally diverse markets. ...more
Rethinking Health
Our Rethinking Health initiative was launched in August 2007, thanks to a generous gift from Robert Pew, Chairman of the Board of Steelcase and Chair of ID's Board of Overseers. Rethinking Health b...more
Schools in the Digital Age
Patrick Whitney
John Grimes
Vijay Kumar
Kevin Denney
A research initiative funded by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. ...more
Thinkering Spaces
Dale Fahnstrom
Heloisa Moura
ThinkeringSpaces are interactive environments that encourage school age children to tinker with things, both physical and virtual, reflect upon what they discover, and elaborate their ideas in ways...more
