Research

In the “Research” stage of the design process, we focus on building a foundation of understanding and begin to explore the subject area, user behaviour, and stakeholder goals and assumptions. It is important to be open-minded at this stage and to try different approaches and ways of thinking.

Typically, when we begin a project, our concepts, ideas, and understanding are quite fuzzy, and require some definition and refinement. We may also have assumptions or hypotheses about the behaviour and needs of users. There are a number of research methods that we can use at different points in this stage to discover more about users and their goals. Some of these methods include surveys, reviewing help desk tickets, or analysing web analytics data.

If you are redesigning an existing product, such as an online service or application, you may be able to draw on web analytics reports to tell you something about current use and common patterns or trends. You may also have a help desk that handles inbound user support questions. Often, these questions or bug reports highlight the parts of your service that are not intuitive or easy to use.

While web analytics reports and help desk tickets can tell you about how users are interacting with your product or service, it is important to understand why they are interacting with it. By getting away from our desks and offices and watching our users in the day-to-day environment (e.g. a lab), we can learn through observation, and begin to better understand context of use and develop empathy for users.

Two effective approaches are user interviews and contextual inquiry. These methods allow you to learn about the user’s attitudes and behaviour through direct observation. Ideally, you want to have interviews or contextual inquiry sessions in the user’s environment, so that you can learn about the context in which they use your tool or product.

Surveys also provide a way of learning about attitudes and reported behaviour. They can offer an additional perspective in terms of user research, and allow you to mix both qualitative and quantitative knowledge. Good surveys are often preceded by interviews and contextual inquiries so that the survey itself can be better designed with specific questions.