Investigating design: A comparison of manifest and latent approaches

•We explore the utility of combining latent and manifest research approaches.•We explore the potential for improved validity & reliability by combining approaches.•We propose ways for combining approaches to maximise research scope and quality.•We demonstrate the combination of approaches using an observational study.

This paper contributes to the on-going focus on improving design research methods, by exploring and synthesising two key interrelated research approaches – manifest and latent. These approaches are widely used individually in design research, however, this paper represents the first work bringing them together and explicitly investigating their complementarity in the design domain. This is realised using an example artificial observation study. In addition to discussing underlying relationships between the approaches, this paper identifies key opportunities for improving design research methods by more explicitly combining both manifest and latent elements. Finally, a number of combinatory approaches are proposed based on a conceptual framework.