When sifting through the myriad resources available to designers, it’s easy to experience a legitimate information overload. Periodicals, drawings, essays, reports – encompassing style, technology, safety, products – there’s so much to uncover! However, we’ve accumulated some exceptional electronic research tools to help, and the IIDA Knowledge Center is one of them.

The International Interior Design Association‘s database does a fantastic job of concentrating a wealth of resources into one succinct and easy-to-use interface. A typical search results in access to relevant research papers, master’s theses, conference reports, specification guides, and more. Just getting started in your research? No problem – the Knowledge Center lets you filter your search by resource type, client type, or topic, which can put you on a fast track to finding the information that’s most relevant to you.

A test topic search for ‘hospitality’ results in a staggering amount of diverse resources, presented in a way that doesn’t make you feel like you’re falling into the electronic abyss of irrelevant hyperlinks. My favorite part about this database: the option to organize your search results by either relevance or topic. Choosing ‘topic’ creates clusters of links based on subcategories such as branding, space planning, color, and more – it’s so simple and time saving!

Regardless of how deep you are into your research for a design project, we hope the IIDA Knowledge Center can be an indispensable addition to your toolbox. Did we mention that it’s FREE?

Keep a look out – we’ll touch on some more electronic resources for designers in the upcoming weeks in honor of the 101 Years of Interior Design celebration!