UX Research Synthesis
UX research ensures that the customer stays at the center of the design process, giving purpose to everything from a product’s design to its usability. Effective UX research methods are the key to making the right decisions based on the input of real-world users, and Synthesis is one of UX research methods.
Which brings us to “Synthesis in UX Research” why it matters and how to apply synthesis in UX Research
Synthesis is the process where we bring our research ideas together to form a fundamental understanding. In our context, this will help us to understand the problems our users are facing so we know why we’re building a specific product.
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During research synthesis, we combine the results of multiple research studies aimed at testing the same conceptual hypothesis. It may be applied to either quantitative or qualitative research.
As we all know, a great UX research is equal to a great product, getting to know what users think, and feel about your product is of great value to you, because it helps you improve on the next version of the product.
WHY IT MATTERS?
Frequently designers keep the content of their research in their head or their laptop which dramatically limits their ability to see the forest for the tree. They lose the faculty to understand the research in totality and are limited in their ability to freely manipulate and associate individual pieces of data. In Human-Centered design, the goal is to make the individual learnings “part of a collective” group’s knowledge .
HOW TO DO IT?
There are so many steps to synthesize UX research but i recommend these four
- Document interviews.
- Affinity cluster.
- Generate insight statements.
- Create ‘how might we’ questions
Documenting interviews
One way of starting to make sense of your data is going back to your interview note to reading through and getting to know more. Without documentation you can’t really gather all the data you got from the interview in your head, an old Chinese proverb says: The faintest ink is more powerful than the strongest memory. Also transcribe interviews to sticky notes, into more information concise, and each interview should have a different color of sticky note.
Affinity Mapping.
Affinity mapping helps to unify large amounts of data by finding relationships between concepts or ideas. They allow you to organize facts, opinions, and issues into taxonomies in order to help diagnose complex problems and identify common issues.
Below is a brief insight on how it is done:
After you’ve transcribe data from the interview (that’s users thoughts) into sticky notes:
- Gather thoughts on sticky notes
- Cluster similar thoughts
- Name your clusters
- Step back and iterate
create a statement of what you learned about each group (that is each cluster)
This will now lead us into generating insight statements
Generate insight statements.
This is where the magic happens. When everything is grouped, you will begin seeing unmet needs and desires of the people you interviewed. These are what we call research findings, otherwise known as insight statements. Insight statements point the way forward, Insight statements are incredibly valuable as they’ll help you frame How Might We questions and give shape and form to subsequent Brainstorms.
Forming how might we questions
Every problem is an opportunity for design. By framing your challenge as ‘How Might We’ questions, you’ll set yourself up for an innovative solution.
“These types of” questions enable us to think opportunistically about some of the underlying problems we uncovered.
By placing how might we at the beginning of each question, we are able to provide a framework for brainstorming solutions centered around real human centered needs.
Example of HMW (How might we)
How Might We provide more relevant information about trip status to frequent travelers so they can experience less frustration during their trip?
Looking at the question above you’ll notice that:
- There is a clear user
- There is a clear benefit which we can measure
- There is a focus in the areas we can explore to answer the questions.
So that clearly has provided a framework for brainstorming.
In conclusion UX research synthesis is one of the fundamentals for making easy-to-use, pleasurable designs as we select, create and organize elements and features in our work.
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