How to Choose a Research Method in a Buffet of Choices

Don’t fret, it all starts with your objective

With so many different types of research activities to choose from, one can easily feel confused and overwhelmed by the myriad of options. Choosing the right one begins with ask yourself which phase of your Design Thinking process you’re at and what you want to learn.

You’ve heard the buzzwords — focus groups, user interviews, concept testing, and so on and so forth. Indeed, these methods make up part of the research process in design. But what are these terms and how do you know which method you should pick for your research?

Well, as designers like to say… it depends.

It depends isn’t the most helpful. And that can make it overwhelming, we get it. To help you navigate this and to quell your urge to skip the research process altogether, we’ve put together a quick guide on choosing the research methods.

The Discovery Phase aka Starting from Scratch

Projects often start with a problem or an idea.

If you’re starting with an idea, that’s cool! Start by thinking about what problem you want to solve and what gap you are filling. For example, if your idea is to provide premium ice cream delivery services, ask yourself what the problem you want to solve is. Maybe it’s that upper-class people don’t want to travel to the store to buy ice cream. Or maybe it’s that no such delivery service exists for ice cream.

If you’re starting with a problem, great! Now we’re ready to be open, curious, and explorative with your problem. For example, if you want to address the needs of having premium ice cream delivery service, your questions might be “How are people currently buying ice cream?” “Where do they go and why?” and “What are their concerns in ice cream delivery service?”

When you have your objectives, match them with the appropriate research method. We’ve compiled some examples of research objectives and some common research methods that helps you be curious and exploratory in your topic areas:

• To understand values and interests of your people → Survey (How do Gen X and Gen Y value ice cream differently?)
• To understand user’s behavior in their natural habitat → Contextual Inquiry, both quantitative and qualitative (How do my users behave when purchasing ice cream in their neighborhood shop?)
• To understand a group’s belief system, motivations, and needs → Focus Group (Why do teenagers purchase ice cream?)
• To understand what your people see, feel, and experience → Shadowing or bodystorming (What do customers do before, during, and after buying ice cream?)
• To quickly sense the main concerns and topics that matters to people in your topic area → Guerilla Interview (To understand the POV of one customer buying ice cream)
• To openly explore the main concerns, and identify what matters to people in your topic area and why it matters, in a free format → User interviews (unstructured, open-ended, exploratory)

Note that research methods in this stage are more divergent and help you discover and explore.

The Define Phase aka Making Sense of the Scratch

In the define stage, you’ll be narrowing down and go deeper into the how and why. You’re going to want to be more targeted and defined in the questions you’re asking compared to the explorative nature in the first stage.

Thus, each research activity you do should help to move towards your refined problem statement and lead you to the next ideation stage. Research methods in this section are therefore more convergent, as you laser in on a focus. Some common research methods, matched with their objective(s), in the define stage are:

• To gain insights deeper into users’ needs and motivations → User interviews (unlike how it’s used in the explore stage, here user interviews are semi-structured or structured)
• To understand of what matters most to target users among several assumptions, and prioritize issues and problems in the topic areas → Card-sorting (to prioritize main issues)
• To gain a first-hand perspective of the target group and the specific activity that you’d like to tackle, helping you empathize users about their needs motivations → Participatory observation study
• To collect self-report data from users over a longer period of time in order to gain insights on target user groups’ behavioral patterns and habits → Diary study (without a solution)
• To learn about existing products that tackle problems that you like to solve, which will help you learn about gaps and opportunities in the existing market before ideating solutions → Competitor’s study (market research)

The Testing Phase aka Making Something Out of the Scratch

The testing stage is when you’re ready to take your idea for a test drive. Ask yourself what needs to be tested. Is it the concept? Usability? Desirability? Validity of design (e.g. visuals/ UI)? Then, you guessed it — match your objective with a research method.

• To prioritize and evaluate which concept is the most relatable and desirable to your users among several design concepts and ideas → Concept testing
• To test your prototypes and designs, to identify problems and pains in testing your prototype and understand the why → Usability testing
• To test the information, content, and/or structure of your digital products, to see if they make sense to your users and match their expectations → Card sorting (to test IA)
• To test if your content, copywriting, and tone of voice is relatable and understandable to your target users → Content testing
• To collect self-report user data over a longer period of time to test your prototype in target users’ context over time → Diary study (with a solution, great when you need insights beyond one-off interviews)
• To compare two different design options and to determine which one results in more desirable impact on your targeted UX metrics → A/B testing

A visual summary

For those who like visuals, we’ve also put together a quick and dirty diagram, just for you.

On the x-axis, the main design stages, and on the y-axis, the methods range from generative qualitative to evaluative and quantitative. (Thanks to Hye Yoon for the graphic!)

There isn’t a right or wrong; you just have to do it

To conclude, to choose your research method, you need only do these three steps, regardless of what step of the research process you’re in:

1. Write down what you already know
2. Write down what you want to know i.e. your research objectives
3. Match your objectives with a method

There isn’t a right or wrong research method; you just have to be honest and answer your goals and then choose the corresponding method(s) that you think will help you achieve your goal. Our guide is in no way all-encompassing or comprehensive of the research methods, but it provides a starting point for you. The most important thing is that you do the research for the success of your project. Now, go ahead and start researching!

Thanks to Aurelia, Hye Yoon, Toffy, and Wendy from 55 Minutes for their contributions to this piece!