Why Design Thinking Can Make Your Research Matter

Your research has value—but value only matters when someone can use it. Design thinking puts the user at the center of your research. It transforms abstract knowledge into concrete change by asking the right questions: Who needs this? What do they need? How will they use it? It’s how you move your research from meaningful to usable.

The Problem

Academia teaches researchers to seek complexity. But real-world users—farmers, teachers, clinicians, policymakers—need clarity and simplicity. Without engaging users early, your research may never fit their context or solve their problems.

Design thinking flips the model: you start by empathizing with users, defining their problems, and designing with them—not just for them. Without this mindset, even brilliant findings stay locked in journals, disconnected from reality.

And let’s be honest: that’s how Tesla lost to Edison. He invented the future—but forgot to sell it.

The Possibility

Imagine your research turning into a real product—like a smartphone app for crop disease diagnosis, co-designed with rural farmers. That’s what happened to Dr. Mumbi Githongo, whose research in precision agriculture became AgriSnap, now used across Kenya.

Or consider Dr. Samuel Mugisha, who collaborated with frontline nurses to build Vitals+, a mobile app for tracking vital signs in remote clinics. It started with participatory workshops—not just datasets.

These researchers thought with empathy, built prototypes, and adapted quickly. That’s design thinking. And it works.

The Solution

Approaches to Monetizing your Research

1 December 2025 at 10:00 – 4 December 2025 at 16:00Lekki

Register Now

At the Translational Research Forum, design thinking is more than a buzzword. It’s a toolkit you can apply right away.

Join hands-on labs like:

🛠 “Design Thinking for Evidence-Based Innovation”

🎯 “Prototyping with Purpose: A Researcher’s Guide”

👥 “User-Centered Research Design for Scalability”

Learn how to gather actionable feedback, test your ideas, and iterate based on real user insights.

The skills you acquire here will not only enhance your research but also ensure that it achieves tangible impacts in the communities that need it most.

A prototype being evaluated by users in a natural environment.

Call to Action

Your research can be more than published—it can be used.

👉 Register today for the Translational Research Forum and discover how design thinking can make your work matter, scale, and succeed.