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ENVD 3150: Professional Communication for Design Students (Fantalis): Design Research

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Design Databases

Researching Problems and Solutions

When doing design research, you are often doing research to define a problem. By deeply understanding the problem, need, or context you can innovate, and back up your innovative decisions to others. Your design solution is only going to be as good as your problem research.

Your design solution may address problems such as:

  • Environmental impact and sustainability
  • Health, wellness, and safety
  • Efficiency and low cost materials and production

Below are database recommendations for researching problems and solutions in various fields

Engineering, Science and Design Librarian

Combine Search Words

AND  link words by AND to search for all words in the same resource

OR  link words by OR to search for one word or another (instead of both/all words)

NOT  to eliminate results with a certain term

“Quotations” – add quotations to a group of two or more words to search for the exact phrase