The place of user research methods in interior design education: user research methods from traditional to innovative

Users are people who use a product, interact with it, and benefit from it to achieve a goal with an intrinsic motivation stemming from needs and desires. This situation makes users experts and sources of information on certain issues and designers professionals who respond to diverse user needs. Within this framework, the data collection methods used to accurately determine user characteristics and develop solutions tailored to these characteristics were examined. The main problem of the study is to reveal the place of user research in the interior design profession, to make the general attitude towards the subject visible in the interior design education structure and teaching methods, and to emphasize the parallels between the importance of the subject and the way it is handled. The study was conducted using the convergent parallel design, one of the mixed-method approaches. In the convergent parallel design, a single research question is answered with different but complementary data and qualitative and quantitative data are collected and analyzed independently and simultaneously. In this direction, in the first step of the study based on three steps, courses that could be associated with user research in the education programs of interior design departments operating on a global and local scale were examined with the document analysis method, in the second step, literature data on user research methods were explored in depth with the systematic review method, and in the third step, an interior design student workshop was carried out using the experience reflection modeling method. In line with the findings obtained, it is seen that research approaches varying from traditional to innovative are a useful tool in the act of design, develop students' skills and expertise regarding the interior design profession, and make design processes more conscious, professional, and sensitive. It is thought that the study, which is handled with this awareness, will be guiding in terms of adding new perspectives to the existing consciousness on the subject.