Good design creates value for customers and the business. Reliably good design requires conducting research. Why? Because to make good decisions throughout the design process, you need input from research to ensure you are designing the right experience and designing the experience right. Otherwise, you risk creating experiences that people can’t use or don’t even need or want in the first place, which is a costly mistake in the age of AI, where both successes and failures scale fast. This report explains the four types of research you need to guide your design efforts — discovery, descriptive, evaluative, and monitoring — and how to conduct it.