The difference between insights and findings, and why it matters
As a service designer working in a strategy-design hybrid, a part of my job is to scope and conduct user research for clients in a wide range of industries. The value of the research phase and its outcome is widely acknowledged across the design industry, among both clients and colleagues. It is a widely accepted belief that in order to improve or design new meaningful and lasting experiences or products and services we have to empathise with our (expected) target groups and understand their behaviour, needs, pains, and expectations, as well as getting their feedback on concepts, preto- and prototypes.
However, a thing that I’ve noticed is that project teams often become too eager to show results from their research study, and therefore focus too little on the actual handling of the empirical data and also on how to activate the outcome of the user research in the right way.
Conducting user research is often costly and resource-heavy. But there is no doubt, that creating an understanding of the people we are designing for is worth the resources, and therefore, we should always seek to make the most of our research data. If the intention is to use the data to give a strategic direction to a design project, then it is crucial to identify insights and not just findings when analysing the data.
In my opinion, being aware of the difference between the two can both help us scope our research activities and activate the outcome the best way during design projects. And so, I’d like to explain the difference between the two in a bit more detail and more importantly, how to make the most of user research.
So, what’s the difference?
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, a finding is “a piece of information that is discovered during an official examination of a problem, situation, or object”. A finding can be articulated by the user herself or observed by the researcher. It is a piece of factual information.
An insight is by the same dictionary defined as “a clear, deep, and sometimes sudden understanding of a complicated problem or situation”. An insight captures unarticulated truths and applies knowledge to facts. It is actionable and transformational.
An easy way to distinguish between the two is to remember that a finding tells us what the users are doing while an insight can explain why the users are behaving as they do. As Marsha Williams states in Insights vs findings (2007): “while findings are free to be trivial and merely interesting (or not), insights bear a much greater responsibility. Findings are often nice to know; insights should be considered need to know”.
To sum up, findings and insights are both essential components in design projects, but we have to be aware that even though findings can be great tools to guide specific design choices, they cannot be used for setting the strategic design direction. For this, we need insights.
But how do we end up having the actionable, transformative insights?
Firstly, we have to scope our research activities so that we end up having the required data. My experience is that we have to be explorative and spend time with our users to truly understand what is at stake. Surveys, focus groups, and usability tests can lead to great findings but if we are striving for insights, we have to gain the knowledge that occurs through personal involvement in the lives of our target group. When I was in university my professor in anthropology, Kirsten Hastrup, taught me and my fellow students to immerse ourselves in the world we are studying. To put ourselves into the context of the users to understand their experience. And to always ensure dutiful documentation e.g. through notes, photos, and video.
Secondly, we have to allocate time for data analysis. While a finding can occur during a meeting with a user, an insight often takes longer to reveal. It requires that we as researchers analyse the collected, empirical data thoroughly. And here I see a blind spot. While it is easy to find good guides and well-described methods on how to conduct qualitative research among users, it is more difficult to find guides that can help during the analysis of empirical data.
Even though the analytical process already starts when we create the research design — at this point we select our empirical object, i.e. what to focus on during the research — it isn’t until we have finished collecting the data that we can truly start exploring patterns and connections across the entire data basis. Analysing the data requires that we put a strategic perspective on the field that we are studying and decide on what the analytical object is. In this way, data analysis is a process where we select what to focus on and what to ignore.
Personally, I see the outcome of the analysis phase as both an interpretation of the data and a theoretical effort. Here, it often helps my colleagues and me to draw on social science theories to make sense of the empirical data and reduce it to clear, actionable insights. It could be well-known theories on rituals, reciprocity, anchoring, myths, stigma, capital, etc. Gaining inspiration from, and actively making use of such theories during an analysis phase is a great tool to understand what is really at stake and to define the big WHY for a project. This helps us define the right project vision and for instance, create an experience map showing the overall experience which we want to create for the user.
When do we need findings?
When we have the why in place, and as part of this, a vision for the strategic direction for the project, then we can start exploring HOW to solve what needs to be solved. How can we activate the insights and transform them into design solutions?
This is where the actual ideation begins and this part includes user testing and the identification of essential research findings that can guide our specific design choices. The findings are needed to create detailed user journeys, improve our preto- and prototypes, and ensure user-friendly design solutions. To mention a few examples.
To summarize, it is my belief that understanding our users is an invaluable way of bridging the gap between what users need and what businesses provide. Acknowledging the difference between findings and insights, and being aware of when we need what, can help us scope our projects precisely and also activate the research outcome in the best possible way to ensure world-class product and service experiences.
I hope this was helpful, and you’re more than welcome to comment with your experience on this subject.
Manyone is a strategy-design hybrid. Visit us at Manyone.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram.
