8 Steps to Sell Design Research Right!
Design Research is often undersold or sold for the wrong reasons. This often creates the need to go over budget in order to do it right, or you end up doing research that could have been way better, just to make it fit the budget. In order to get the balance right, here is a reflection on the reasons behind the research phase and some tips on how to sell it right in order to make the budget fit the reality.
As surprising as it might sound, the reason we do Design Research is not because the clients ask for it, nor because it is a nice to have, not even because we want to gather what our client’s customers have to say, or taking some pictures of their home and what they do.
We do Research because needs and expectations are not things that fall from the sky into our lap when we are doing fieldwork. The needs, expectations, opportunities, and everything that really matters as an outcome of a research phase, are things we develop thanks to the analysis process.
1st Point: Users and Stakeholders (Not Just Users!)
But not only does Research make it possible to understand the customer, client or user, it also makes us aware of our client’s context, the restrictions and the general framework they work with. All things that we have to take into consideration when creating something that makes sense for our client.
Consider incorporating research to talk to the different stakeholders apart from the user. Also, this helps adapting the project much better to the companies needs and expectations. A briefing is often an over simplification of the company’s needs and because it lacks the company’s context.
2nd Point: All Research Everything (Jay-Z’s Adaptation to Research)
Research is fundamental in any stage of an innovation process. At the beginning in order to explore users’ needs, and shaping possible solutions. In the generative stage in order to analyze and refine the propositions that the company is working on. It is similarly required during final stages, when the product or services enters the validation phase, where final adjustments have to be implemented for the projects’ success.
Any project, at any phase will profit from research in order to add all the needed context to the decision making. And even if the client has little budget for it, some research is always better than none research at all.
3rd Point: Time to Analyze
Raw data makes no real sense, only through analysis you gain real insight of the reality that is being analyzed. This means that if you want to convert the information gathered during the fieldwork into something actionable and that has an impact in the design phase, time is needed.
To analyze the raw data properly, Researchers need time. Time to challenge the insights they extract with others in the team, and finally extract the true value of the research phase. This doesn’t mean research should go on forever, but some time is needed for analysis. And should be granted.
To sum it up, if you have to choose, reduce the sample size and use the time you gain from it to let the team work on the analysis.
4th Point: Prioritize Relevance
In Design Research relevance is more important than significance. Meaning that it is better to conduct five interviews that saturate the target’s discourse, than having tons of superficial interviews that don’t give you anything substantial to work with.
When estimating a budget for research, we always get to the point where we discuss how many interviews will be done, diversity of targets, and the impact on the budget. This is a topic on its own terms. But to keep it short, it is better to focus on less target groups, those with a high impact and really cover all the topics needed, than getting just an very superficial understanding by trying to cover a wide variety of target groups. How relevant the information is for the design is the focus, not so much the quantity.
Sometimes the information you get from one interview changes everything. This doesn’t mean we should only do one interview from now on, but it illustrates that when making a quotation, having to choose, we should prioritize relevance.
So, again, to sum it up, if you have to choose, reduce diversity and focus on the saturation.
5th Point: Recruiting
When planning Research, you must know that you need to recruit the right people in order to get good, interesting and relevant information. This means that you should show some love for the recruitment.
Not everyone is a valid informant. Think about the best people to participate in the research, make a recruitment survey and don’t take anyone you know as an informant just to keep the price down. If you have to reduce costs, it is always better to use a snowball process than relying only on friends and family. Remember, it is better to do some research instead of not doing any. But still, try going out of your closest circle, if possible. People in your circle are probably too close to you, they can strongly bias your research and not give you the information you need. If possible, make use of a recruitment company. This means that you must budget recruitment and incentives too. Also, plan at least one or two weeks ahead to recruit people, so you can be sure that the right people are being recruited.
6th Point: Fieldwork
Conducting fieldwork, might come with some additional costs, depending on the intensity and the location. If your team has to travel, spend the day away from the office, etc., you need to plan.
If your team has to conduct research away from the office you need to think about the costs that this implies. Your team needs to eat, they need to travel and maybe even spend some nights at a hotel somewhere. This is often hard to estimate. Therefore, if the client is ok with it, charge this additionally, apart from the research quotation. Fieldwork is often scheduled for a certain moment of the year, but can be rescheduled for many reasons, flight costs and hotel costs may vary, for that reason it is better to take it out. If not possible, you are probably best of, thinking of the worst case scenario to not loose money at this point.
7th Point: Not Less Than Two People
Especially when doing qualitative research, at least two people should be involved. Obviously this may be seen simply as a factor that increases expenses, but in the long term it results in better work. It shortens the information dump time, improves the analysis, it helps to avoid personal biases, and improves the quality of the insights as an outcome of the research.
You need at least two people to analyze data gathered from research properly. Sure one person can do it, but to really get the most out of the information in order to extract great insights you need to think, discuss, move ideas around, and talking to yourself only makes you go mad and is not as productive. So, again, try cutting costs in other areas, but not downsizing the team to less than two.
8th point: planning the deliverables
Finally, you need to think about the outcome of the research. What kind of deliverable do you want to hand over to your client? And especially, what should it be for? Often, as Design Research is carried out to as part of a larger process, it may not make sense to create a huge document that one one will read. But maybe you want to create a user journey, so a Designer should be involved in the project. Or you might want to make a great video showing the highlights of the interviews. In that case you have to evaluate if it is ok doing a very basic video, so if a camera and a tripod will do the job or if you need a film crew to do something more professional.
Depending on what you plan on delivering, and what the client expects you to deliver, you need to plan ahead and include those profiles in the budget so you can get them involved without going over budget.
If you follow these eight points, you should be able to sell research properly. This way your team can do a great job and convert the client’s investment into a fully satisfactory, high impact result for them.
