This course investigates how research strategies empower the design process. Students conduct both formative and summative research, including contextual overview, audience research, visual exploration, and user testing to guide and evaluate their media design practices. We explore participatory design, iterative design, personas, scenarios, and visualization among other tactics. In the process, we think about questions such as: What is design? What informs design decisions? How does design synthesize and contextualize ideas into effective communication? Whether you want to think about how design can support a cause, establish a brand, motivate interaction, remediate aesthetics or initiate a totally new media project, this introduction to design research methods should help you to reach your goals. Over the course of the semester each student develops a design concept to gain insight and expertise in addressing issues of content creation, user interactions, collaboration, media platforms, prototypes, and presentation. Case studies, theoretical readings, experiments, guest lectures, and critiques of student work inform our design approaches. This course may count as the three (3) credits of Media Methods requirement or as a seminar. While this is not a production course, familiarity with an area of media production is recommended.