Design your Design Research!

With design research becoming an emerging and legitimate profession there is a boom of methods and toolkits online. But like other fields, there is very little effort in defining a design research methodologies. In fact, there is often ignorance of the fact that the foundations of design research reside in the social sciences and academics methods of conducting qualitative research. Having said that, what makes design research different and exciting is how design researchers are able to take these theoretical and academic methods and make extremely creative ways of using them on the field with a serious intention of applying the learnings.

Yet, companies are often discouraged when the research outcomes do not align with the organizations or do not provide actionable insights. In my opinions, this happens because the is either a vague or no research methodology that has been used. However, in recent times I have noticed that user research has become less user-centric and has become a list of requirements or obstacles designers or companies must overcome. So below I have listed some tips on how you can better define your research so you have exciting, rich and actionable insights.

Research by its nature is methodological and logical and rarely does research start on the field or when you are conducting your interviews. Research actually begins when you begin to curate a comprehensive plan for data collection, this is empirical. This comprehensive plan is a “blueprint” for your data collection and should be aimed at answering specific research questions or testing specific hypotheses and must specify at least three processes:

1. The context within which your research question or hypotheses sits and why it is relevant to study now
2. The data collection process, by what means you plan to collect data and why. If you are a design researcher you might be inclined toward using a toolkit or other participatory methods that may need their own design iteration process
3. The sampling process, what will your sample size be, the demographic and geography of your participants

A thorough design of your research should establish the objectives of the research you are undertaking, justify the decision-making processes, and the conceptual structure of your inquiry. Taking the time to develop a research blueprint will help you to organize your thoughts, set the boundaries of your study, maximize the reliability of your findings, and avoid any misleading or getting caught in a confusion cycle where your findings do not align with the organization’s goals.

Here are some tips on how you can design a crisps research framework:

• What’s the question — before you even begin designing your research the starting point should be a question or a hypothesis that you are trying to solve. The tile of your framework should be one question or statement. Brainstorming or spider diagrams, I find, are a good place to begin the process of developing questions. If your title outlines and explicitly states the question of what you intend to investigate then it will lead you to determine what since it will determine what processes you will use to collect your data and who you will be talking to.
• Specific specificity — define is my mantra. Begin by creating your own definitions of the topic or subject you are trying to investigate. You can choose to define a keyword or define a process, anything that is central to your investigation. Try not to describe any aspect of your inquiry vaguely or generalize. Any design sits in very specific moments, they are made for specific actions and activities so should your research. Do not worry about
• Secondary Research First — Secondary research of your topic will not only orient you to the landscape of your research topic but it will also lead you to define your question/hypothesis but it will also act as a proof of concept to your study. Therefore, your framework in any format should include references of the sources, so that you can refer to them when needed for basic postulates, or to test your data in relation.
• Significance — Be sure you clearly articulate why your study is important and how it contributes not only to the problem you are trying to solve but also is in line with the organization’s larger purpose and vision.
• Relationship between Past Research and Your Study — do not simply offer a summary description of prior research. Your literature review should include an explicit statement linking the results of prior research to the research you are about to undertake. This can be done, for example, by identifying basic weaknesses in previous studies and how your study helps to fill this gap in knowledge.
• Contribution to the Field — in placing your study within the context of prior research, don’t just note that a gap exists; be clear in describing how your study contributes to, or possibly challenges, existing assumptions or findings.
• Objectives, Hypotheses, or Questions — your research design should include one or more questions or hypotheses that you are attempting to answer the research problem underpinning your study. They should be clearly articulated and closely tied to the overall aims of your paper. Although there is no rule regarding the number of questions or hypotheses associated with a research problem, most studies in the social sciences address between one and five key questions.
• Think About Data Collection — the research back-end work must include a well-developed and detailed plan for how you intend to collect or generate data and how it will be analyzed. If you are serious about understanding your users then you can not afford to say I will just talk to them and see what I get. It is important to visualize how your data collection process is going be (even though on-field things might not happen exactly how you plan). This will help you ensure that the method used to gather information for analysis is aligned with the topic of inquiry and the underlying research questions to be addressed.
• Know Your Techniques — when you are in the process of data collection clearly describe the techniques [e.g., semi-structured interviews] or toolkits [e.g., questionnaire] used to gather data. Your research design should note how the technique or instrument will provide reasonably reliable data to answer the questions associated with the research problem.
• Do Not Worry About Vocabulary — as you are reading this you might be thinking that to make note of all the processes you will need the technical terms and specialized language. But it is not the case. It is more important for you to make note of the processes in a way that you understand.
• Ethical Dilemmas — we must acknowledge that as researchers we collect very personal information of people. It is important that you have their consent to record and they are aware of how you aim to use their stories, pictures, etc.
• Limitations of the Study — all studies have limitations. Your research design should anticipate and explain the reasons why these limitations exist and clearly describe the extent of missing data. It is important to include a statement concerning what impact these limitations may have on the validity of your results and how you helped ameliorate the significance of these limitations.

*The list above is in a particular order