Introduction
This lesson contains 4 activities you should complete as you go through it.
Design Research
In years gone by, there was a disconnect between the marketing department, who often did the research and the designers and developers who made and designed the product. This is why the whole team must be involved at the research level so that everyone has an equal understanding of the user.
Quantitative vs Qualitative
Market research tends to be focused more on quantitative rather than qualitative data. Quantitative data concerns quantity (how many), whereas qualitative data concerns quality and in-depth knowledge.
We gather quantitative data by analysing web analytics, market segmentation and broad user analysis. This is great at telling us what people want to buy, but it doesn’t help us understand why they want to buy it and how they want to interact.
It can be useful to start with quantitative research to analyse what segment our user will likely be from, then perform qualitative research to understand more about them in depth. Then later, once we have our models in place, quantitative data can help us understand how a particular persona fits into our wider user group.
The difficulty of quantitative data is that it focuses on data points like clicks, time on site, surveys, etc. But unfortunately, the user can’t be reduced to a click. They’re much more complex with moods and desires, requiring analyses that capture these complexities.
Learn About the Product
Before starting your research, you need to understand what the product is and how it works. You can get this insight by meeting with the various stakeholders and researching the field yourself. Sometimes you’ll be working in a field in which you are unfamiliar, and you’ll need to spend some time reading and researching to understand the context in which the business operates.
Remember, even though we focus on the user’s goals, it is critical to analyse the business goals to ensure we’re building a sustainable product for the client.
Meetings with the stakeholders offer insight into their business goals and any constraints and limitations. Most of the stakeholders are knowledgeable about their own product, so use this to your advantage.
You can also interview subject matter experts with specific insights and understandings in a particular field. They might be ‘super-users’, so it’s important to understand that your users might differ from them.
Collect Qualitative Data
When collecting user data, it’s important to get representative users to do representative tasks. There’s no use collecting data from people who aren’t like your end users and are not completing tasks related to your product.
It’s best to conduct interviews and assessments in a location where the user is likely to use your product. This gives you insight that you might otherwise never have gotten, plus it helps the user to relax and feel at ease. Ideally, they shouldn’t feel analysed scientifically but rather see your meeting with them as a collaboration.
Observing users is often better than interviews because people can’t easily self-assess and communicate issues they encounter. Sometimes a user will have found a workaround solution to a problem they wouldn’t think to share in an interview, but you’ll spot these when observing. Do they have passwords on sticky notes next to their computer? Do they always need to Google something before they can complete a task?
Try to observe them rather than lead them through any processes. Ask open-ended questions to get them talking and explaining what they’re doing. You should take on the role of the apprentice and have them explain what they want and any issues they have. Listen for any goals they might have, as this will give you insights later to determine what the user really wants.
When interviewing and observing users, we need to have open minds to see and explore various elements of the design and their interaction with it. It’s very unlikely that you will get a homogenous group of users. This means you are also unlikely to get straightforward answers for major design decisions early in the process. Over a series of iterations, you will probably start to see certain patterns emerge.
It’s important to note that there is a difference between users and customers. They are usually the same people, but the users might differ significantly from the customers in large corporate enterprises or scientific and medical organisations. For example, at a school, the teachers might be the users, while the principal might be the customer who will actually pay for the product.
Contextual Inquiry
The following is a technique that will help you in conducting interviews and observations with users. It was developed by Beyer and Holtzblatt and is called Contextual Inquiry and emphasises conducting observations within a specific context and environment. Try going to their workplace or home to see how they usually interact.
It is essential that you create a partnership with the person you are observing and that they feel like they are leading the exploration to solve problems and overcome issues.
When interpreting the sessions, you need to read between the lines to understand and unpack why users say and do certain things. Remember, users aren’t as objective as they might seem.
Conclude Research
After observing users, you need to extract that data and make it useful and understandable. You need to start grouping certain goals, issues and other attributes of various users.
It’s best to do this close to when you have collected the research to ensure accuracy. Grouping users based on similar attributes leads us to personas, which we’ll cover in the next lesson.
Activities
💻 WATCH
Contextual Inquiry (10m)
💻 WATCH
💻 WATCH
Analyzing User Data (30m)
📖 READ
From About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design Paperback, 2014, by Alan Cooper et.al.
- Chapter 2: ‘Understanding the Problem: Design Research’. (2h)
Lesson Task
Brief
You will continue to work on your cross-course project. This is the one you designed and built in the first semester.
In this task, we will conduct design research for your chosen site by looking at two or three competitor websites and asking users to interact with them.
In typical projects, you’d perform many more interviews, but for this task, we will just be doing one so that you can get a feel for how it would go.
Level 1 Process
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Choose two or three websites for the user to work with.
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Choose specific tasks that you want the user to do. E.g. Find a red jacket that costs less than $…
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Next, sit down with the potential user at a computer (if you can’t physically sit down with them, then a video conference call will work).
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Ask the users to perform the specific tasks you decided on, and encourage them to give feedback as they work. Try not to lead them, but let them explain why they’re doing certain things and what they like/don’t like about each site.
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After the interview, consider what surprised you about how the user interacted with the websites and what they did as expected. Were there any sticking points which could be made easier for the user? What did they like and what didn’t they like on the different sites?
Level 2 Process
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Ask the user to interact with your website. Give them the same tasks you asked them to perform with the competitor websites. How did your site fare in comparison? Can you see where you might make adjustments?
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Consider conducting further contextual inquiry interviews with other users to see their thoughts. The more users you interview, the more rounded a perspective you can get.