Design research is already at work inside industry, often under other names or reduced to user research. It shapes how products get defined, how organizations decide what is worth building, how innovation and transformation actually happen, and what impact all of it has on society. Yet it is rarely credited as such, and the vocabulary connecting corporate practice to academic research seems to remain thin.

This session puts practitioners and researchers in one room. Marta Szpilewska, Mary Lou Tierney and Tucker Marion—spanning consumer product strategy, enterprise transformation, and the study of new product development—will discuss where design research lives in business today, what practitioners actually call it and what gets lost in translation between the studio, the boardroom and the lab.

Far from trying to re-define design research, the panel asks where it already lives in business, and what collaborations, hiring paths and research questions open up once we look closely.

This event is hybrid. Register to attend in person at the button or virtually here.

Moderator:
Paolo Ciuccarelli: Founding Director, Center for Design; Professor, Art + Design, CAMD

Speakers:
Tucker Marion: Associate Professor, D’Amore-McKim School of Business & College of Engineering; Faculty Director, Master’s in Product Management
Marta Szpilewska: Design Strategist, Researcher & Independent Consultant; formerly SharkNinja
Mary Lou Tierney: Global Design Researcher, Strategist & Systems Thinker; CEO and Founder, Simply Better Teams

Presented by the Center for Design at Northeastern University in partnership with the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) Boston Chapter.