To understand people you need to ask better research questions

As a product design student at the turn of the millennium, I loved the idea of doing research at the start of my projects to help me understand the problems I was trying to solve. Perhaps somewhat naively, I assumed that ‘research’ was simply about watching people do things, asking them about what they were doing, and then asking what new features or products would make that task easier..

I’ve spent many thousands of hours researching people since then, and I’ve come to realise that my early forays into research were somewhat superficial. I won’t beat myself up about it; I was young and didn’t know any better. I do, however, want to share with you the deeper and more nuanced understanding I now have about how to approach this kind of research at the start of a design project. I want to share with you the art of the research question.

Business-centric questions masquerading as people-centric questions

When a client shares a project brief, the challenge it embodies usually centres on how to influence people’s behaviour, experiences and attitudes: essentially, to get them to buy or use something, and to think more positively about the client as a result of doing so. Typically, the client will have conducted some kind of investigation into the target audience to inform the business case for developing a new proposition, overhauling an existing product, or repositioning their brand. Facts like how many customers there might be, how they perceive a brand and what their past purchasing and usage behaviours have been are great for justifying the project, but they don’t provide a particularly rich starting point for a designer. Inevitably then, the need to conduct research at the outset of the project emerges.

Most of the time, the client and design team will plan this upfront research together. The client usually brings some pretty strong opinions to the table and, in some cases, may have even decided on the type of solution they want already. They’ve thought long and hard about the project, done the background research, and worked hard to create a strong business case for updating their offering — it’s understandable that they should already have an idea about what that updated product or service might look like.

In many cases, the design team is happy to accept this. Together they agree to focus on defining the ‘user needs’ for the proposed solution. This usually involves brainstorming research questions that emphasise understanding what features users would most like and what their expectations are. Questions like: “How do users currently do x,y,z with the product?” “What do they like and dislike about it?” “What do they like about competitor products?” and “How valuable would x,y,z feature be to them?” are written up on Flipchart paper and then turned into discussion guides or survey questions.

These brainstorming exercises purport to be about people, but the questions they produce are almost always business-centric and solution focussed. Narrowly framing people as ‘users’ and asking reductive questions about the specifics of purchasing and feature preferences tells us almost nothing of value about how to influence behaviour, experiences and attitudes.

Framing questions at the level of phenomena

Most business-focused questions fall into one of three categories:

• What did people do, or what will they do?
• What are their perceptions of an object, brand or experience?
• What are their preferences for one thing over another?

To frame a research question at the level of the phenomena we need to zoom out from the minutiae of these interactions, and instead focus on the way people experience the world that a product or service exists within. We also need to consider how context — environmental, as well as cultural and societal — inflect upon these experiences and how people relate to them.

Let’s take, as an example, a household appliance manufacturer that sells washing machines, vacuum cleaners, ovens, fridge-freezers, and so on. The company is in the process of designing a new range of appliances and is conducting research to inform their designs. Usually, this research would take the form of focus groups and surveys, and would focus on product features, expectations and brand perceptions. This type of research can be very helpful in the design process, but what it fails to capture is what a product or service means to a someone — how they engage with it, what emotional connection they have to it, and what role they expect it to fulfil within their world. Framing a research question at the level of the phenomena allows us to delve much deeper into these issues, first by thinking about which of our worlds a product or service lives within, then by reflecting on what it is that it enables us to do. The household appliances in question clearly inhabit the world of home and the world of family. They enable people to take care of themselves, of other people, and of the physical space in which they live. Chances are, if you simply asked a focus group what their ovens or fridge freezers mean to them, you’d get a lot of blank looks in return. But if we examine the role these appliances play in their day to day lives, the wealth of information that becomes available is staggering. A meal that is cooked in the oven, using ingredients that are stored in the fridge, can represent any number of things — a celebration of someone’s birthday, a new health regime, a gathering of friends, a chance to spend time with family after a long day at the office.

Once we’ve thought about the worlds and potential purposes of the products and services we’re interested in, then we’re ready to frame the question. This usually centres on trying to understanding the meaning of an experience. In our appliance project example, it might be something like, “What does it mean to take care of your family?” Questions like this still allow us to look at the lower-level business focused questions about how appliances are used, but they also lend our inquiry an openness that helps us to understand more about what it means to use those appliances. It gives us an insight into how cultural and societal ideas of taking care of your family might inflect meaning upon the experience, and how this in turn influences how we engage with those products. It drills down to the emotional connection we have with these products — a connection that we might not even realise exists — that drives how we choose a new dishwasher or vacuum cleaner, and what role we expect these products to fulfil in our worlds.

When I worked on just such a project a number of years ago I was particularly struck by two photographs from one of our diary study participants:

This photograph above is of her living room, which she described as a mess. She expressed a desire to tidy up so that her family felt comfortable when they returned from school and work. Her baby was pretty demanding of her time that day, so she wasn’t able to clean the living room. When we talked about this photograph it became apparent that to her, it represented failure. She felt as though she was incapable as a mother, because she had been unable to juggle the needs of her baby with those of the family as a whole. She wasn’t caring for everyone as effectively a she wanted to.

Later the same day she shared the photograph below, which she described as “pure bliss”.

The room is still untidy, but the presence of her family all happy and gathered together as a unit totally changes her experience of the room and what it means to care for her family. When they’re not present she sees a mess to be tidied, but when they’re there the mess fades into the background. Spending time with the people she loves is a more significant way to take care of them than providing them with a tidy physical space. This photograph also represents a sense of fulfilment; the idea of a lack of maternal capability embodied in the previous picture dissipating with the appearance of her happy family.

These two photographs tell us a great deal about what it means to take care of family and how different situations can foreground and background the need to use an appliance — in this situation, a vacuum cleaner — both of which have implications for how such an appliance should be designed and marketed.

You can’t understand phenomena in a research lab

The example photographs shared above show clearly that in order to truly understand phenomena, you need to observe people and their experiences in context, and with the implicit cultural and societal backdrop in mind.

Next time you start a project with a client, and you begin scoping your research together, push to observe participants in context. Some clients may not see the value of framing research questions at the level of phenomena, but by getting agreement to observe participants in context you will still get the opportunity to see the subject of your research at this level. If you do find yourself working with a client who is only interested in their business-focused question, then try framing a research question at the level of the phenomena without them. It’s much easier for clients to grasp the significance of fully understanding the people and the worlds that you’re designing for when you’ve got the insights to share with them. Revealing your ‘secondary’ phenomena focused question after the fact can be a good way to get the information you need, while still following the client’s brief.

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