Research

“Research” is shorthand for “Let’s find out how our users behave to help us create a solution to their problems or address their unmet needs.” It’s also known as “design research” or “user research”. How much research you need depends on how new and different the thing you’re creating is from what users already experience. In general, the more new or different something is, the more uncertain we are about the experience our users will have. Usually some research is necessary.

Sometimes the term research also refers to testing a design to make sure people can use it. For more on that, see the Testing chapter.

Who?

Usually a designer or a dedicated user researcher is responsible for the research. Ideally others from the team also contribute to or observe the research so that the learnings impact everyone’s work.

When working with new users or a new problem, designers can spend anywhere up to 100% of their time conducting research. Enough research is done when the team can answer the original research question, or at least when they hit a point of diminishing returns. For example, a research question might be, “We want to inventory all the ways our customers use latex and why, so that we can improve how we sell latex.” The team then researches customers. When the team has collected a lot of data and each new client interaction isn’t teaching them much that’s new, research can stop.

Insights

Ideally research not only informs but also inspires, or leads to new insights. In our example, perhaps the team discovered that the customer doesn’t always know what type of latex will work best for their application at the time they order it. Perhaps, like someone who brings home multiple paint color samples from the paint store before painting a room, customers want to try out several latex samples simultaneously. This can lead directly to forming hypotheses the team can test, such as, “If we offer clients a set of latex samples then sales will increase by x% (because we made it easier to find the right latex) and repeat sales will increase by y% (because overall customer satisfaction is higher).”

Which Method?

There are many research methods commonly in use. To help you understand the basics, here are six common types of research questions and methods that would help answer each one. We don’t have the space to explain how all these methods work, but you can search the Internet (and the Testing chapter) for more info.

Data / Do / Discuss

Here’s an example of how different methods are used. Let’s say a latex ecommerce company is reviewing their website analytics and notices that customers often fail to successfully enter a payment method when trying to buy latex online. The team now knows what is happening, but not why. The team then visits some customers’ offices to watch what customers actually do when they are ordering online. They learn that customers may enter a credit card but then add items to their order and exceed their corporate charge limit and must pay by invoice, but the website doesn’t allow changing the payment method at that point, so the customers give up. To gather the specific information the team needs to fix this problem, such as each companies’ charge limit, they interview customers in charge of ordering the latex. To sum up this process, the team looked at data, then what customers do, then discussed it with customers: data, do, discuss.

To anyone who has done informal research or market research it can come as a surprise that designers often avoid using focus groups and surveys. Why? Because software applications are tools that are used. So it’s more useful to know about what people actually do than what they say they do, or what they say they like. So instead of asking them questions, designers often watch what users do.

Like all topics in this book, research can be much more complex than described here. A skilled designer or researcher will have methods learned from fields such as anthropology or ethnography to help them understand people.