User Research
Erika Hall, co-founder of Mule Design, a design studio in San Francisco, outlines in her book Just Enough Research the ideas and methods behind user research and analysis.
The term design ethnography refers to applying and understanding insights and feedback centered around consumers in order to improve their product design. Erika Hall provides four main techniques to approach design ethnography:
- Deep dive: Essentially, “deep diving” means applying the empathy you have for other people to the design that you produce for them. You can do this by brainstorming from their perspective and putting yourself in their shoes to recognize their needs and wants.
- Daily life: Exercising a skill called participant observation, where you immerse yourself in the field to understand the context and circumstances in reality, allows you to to create the best work and come up with better ideas.
- Data analysis: It’s important to collect and study the patterns and observations who or what you are creating design for.
- Drama!: The best way to understand user behavior more fully is to create personas and bring the stories of people alive.
Hall uses the idea user persona to describe a fictional user archetype created from extensive research of real people. A user persona represents the behaviors and needs of a specific people group. Creating a persona not only allows the designer to gain a fuller approach to user-centered design, but can also be applied to the many other fields of work that serve people’s needs, like business, marketing, and engineering. Hall reminds us, however, that it is better to create as few personas as possible and that this can be done by connecting relationships between personas and creating a persona representing multiple roles. It is also important to note the danger of unintentionally creating an imaginary figure instead of a useful persona. A way to mitigate this danger is to engage in collaborative product development and intentional research on real people.