Design research in the context of federal law enforcement

In recent years, design thinking and design research have proved indispensable in creating useful and usable solutions that both address human needs and create value for the client. Design research is the connective activity that helps us integrate specialized knowledge into meaningful solutions. We used a structured design process and various design research methods to facilitate the design and development of a software and hardware solution for a federal law enforcement agency to automate and standardize the processing and collection of a certain type of evidence. The methods we used were crucial in gathering the necessary evidence and presenting a synthesized, meaningful picture of the problems at hand to the client. This in turn led to a highly effective and collaborative partnership that resulted in a high-value application that helped standardize the current state of practice and advanced the mission of the federal law enforcement agency in the realm of intelligence gathering.