User Research Through Awareness
It is hard to say that I have no biases. For a human being, biases are so natural and it is about our survival skills. Sure, I couldn’t explain some biological and social origins of it, I am not expert but I feel sure to say that for improvement, we should be aware of our biases in any terms. For designers, it might be more challenging because one part of our job is about understanding human and human needs. In this piece, I would like to share my experiences related to biases in the research process. And hope it would be useful for you as well.
Conducting user research process as a human
Either short term or long term, user research is one of the most powerful sides of designers. There are lots of tools/ways to reach good designs. However, I realized that designs that have insights from user research are better. In this point, I should ask two questions; is all user research activity trustworthy? — and if not, what do we need to check it? At the beginning of the research, we can take some actions like creating the right research objectives, creating the right questions or recruiting the right participants to reach proper outcomes. These all are not just about methods but also related to resistance towards beliefs and biases. It might not be easy to accept but our biases could be an obstacle for research and its’ outcomes. There are many cases we face about it. Think about meeting before research. It is possible to have someone from business, development or design teams who has strong feelings why users don’t use the features that you working on. Also you could have feelings about it. It is normal and so human as I mentioned in the beginning. However, it is a huge mistake to act through these feelings. We should be aware of them and we remind ourselves about these could be a hypothesis, not be correct inputs for research.

Let’s think about analyzing research outcomes. After the research, before compiling your insights, it is necessary to collect all outcomes from users. These also should include real words/quotations. At the beginning of the analyzing, it is not appropriate to say some sentences like ‘User said this, I think she meant that..’. If you are not sure, you should avoid assumptions. It doesn’t mean that you don’t have assumptions or hypothesis. If you are in the design process, it is so natural to have them in all stages. But we should not interpret them like user outcomes. Because one of the main goals in user research is getting the true insights from users and as a result reaching the reliable analyses. For reliable research process, I follow a process like below;
1- Collect all notes, voice records or videos after research.
“Let’s do it as earlier as possible because I could forget some details after research.”
2- Make all outcomes visible and group them.
“Ok, whiteboard waits for us! I have a post-it and a marker. I just need to keep the question in my mind - Is it a user opinion or mine?
3- Discuss outcomes with the team and other researchers for finding clues and new opportunities.
“My teammate hesitated to accept some insights so it would be cool to share video and discuss more”
4- Share research report that includes information about the process, user words, analysis, and next steps.
“The mapping between insights and product features would be helpful for the product team.”
Surely, this process can be changeable depending on the type of research and the scope of the product. However, for every stage, it is so valuable to think your approach and your data in terms of reliability.
To sum up, we have already known cognitive biases to understand users. But we also need to keep in mind that we have a responsibility to be aware of our biases as a designer to create credible works.
