> [!important] **Is the design research helpful when considering whether the product is marketable?** Market research and design research are both important types of research that help businesses make decisions, but they differ in their focus and goals:  - **Market research** Focuses on the broader market and business goals, such as identifying market opportunities and maximizing sales. Market research helps companies understand their target market, how to market their products, and make financial decisions. It often involves analyzing macro data and economic benchmarks.  - **Design research** It focuses on the user experience and how to improve products or services based on user needs, behaviors, and attitudes. Design research is a type of user-centered research that helps companies understand how users will interact with their products and what experience they will have.  Here are some other differences between market research and design research: - **Scope** Market research broadly views the market, while design research focuses on the user experience.  - **Data** Market research often relies on quantitative methodology, while design research can involve more qualitative data.  - **Goals** Market research aims to improve profitability, while design research aims to improve the user experience.  - **Focus** Market research focuses on the "who" and "what" of the consumer landscape, while design research focuses on the "why" and "how" of the user experience. The following are some of the key points where user research is useful when considering marketability assessment. Design research is a very effective method for assessing the marketability of a product because it reveals the ‘essential needs of users’, which cannot be found by simply researching the market size. By gaining a deep understanding of user insights, it is possible to develop competitive products and formulate strategies for launching them on the market. 1. **Discovering latent needs**. - Through design research methods such as interviews and observations, it is possible to discover ‘latent needs’ and ‘hidden issues’ that users are unaware of. This enables us to derive ideas for new products and services that are not yet on the market and to find points of differentiation. 2. **User behaviour understanding**. - By observing how users use a product or service in their daily lives or in specific situations, or by observing their dissatisfaction or areas for improvement, the market suitability of a product can be determined. Knowing the actual behaviour of users is important data for assessing a product's effectiveness and likelihood of acceptance. 3. **Create personas and user journeys**. - Based on the results of the design research, typical user images (personas) and user experience processes (user journeys) can be created to clarify the target market and to examine in detail what value the product can provide. This increases the likelihood of market acceptance of the product. 4. **Building empathy**. - Design research focuses on empathy with the user's point of view, which enables a deep understanding of the psychological needs and feelings of the target audience. This allows you to design products and services that provide the experience users really want, and clarify your value proposition in the marketplace.