Lean Research — Part 1 of 2 (or “How emotional data can reduce your exposure to PDF research reports”)

(Part 2 of this series, on database design, can be found here)

Hello fellow designer, I hear you’re burnt out on research. You’re right, no one reads anymore. So your manager scoffed when you wanted to show a highlight reel from a recent series of interviews? And yeah, that one quote isn’t actually all that representative of the voice of the user. Accurate user research is really hard. Synthesizing the totality of a user experience is a tall order.

Remember when we all thought data visualizations would rescue us?

Unfortunately, as an industry we’ve also turned our noses up at data. Mostly for good reason. Quantitive data simply cannot currently capture the broad record of our experience as users, as humans. But it still remains, in a lean design environment no one is reading those PDF research reports, creating an awkward tension of somehow over-producing ineffective research artifacts. So how do we solve the problem of efficiently conveying qualitative information in a lean research setting?

I’d like to introduce you to emotional data.

Emotional data is exactly what you’re thinking. It’s data about emotions. It can include things like whether a user feels confident navigating the menu of an app for the first time, or whether a…