Why Bother with Design Research?
Interaction designers aren’t usually required to do design research. And as noted in Chapter 2, most designers don’t; instead, they trust their instincts, knowledge, and experience to create useful, usable, and desirable products and services. In some cases, especially on small projects, this may be the correct approach. But on larger projects in unfamiliar domains, cultures, or subject areas, this approach can be lunacy.
Designers usually work on projects outside of their area of expertise (design), which most designers, being curious people, enjoy. (I've personally worked on projects for active stock traders, maintenance workers, teenagers, teachers, physically impaired elderly people, and news junkies, to name a few.) The only way, aside from being an intuitive genius, of understanding these diverse groups and the environments the live and work in is to do research. Meeting even a single user will likely change your perspective on a project. Spending a day observing someone do his or her job will give insights into that job that you would never get otherwise. Most designers will do some sort of research, even if it isn't formalized.
Brenda Laurel on Design Research
Brenda Laurel, Ph.D., is the chair of the Graduate Media Design Program of the Art center College of Design as well as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. She has written and edited several seminal interaction design books, including Computers as Theatre, The Art of Human-Computer Interface Design, and, most recently, Design Research: Methods and Perspectives.
Why is design research important?
Perhaps the single most pernicious sort of folly I have seen over nearly thirty years in the computer field is the belief on the part of engineers, designers, and marketing people that they "just know" what will work for their audience. For an extremely observant, experienced designer, this may indeed be true, but such people are exceedingly rare, and those who are most successful have "trained" their intuition by carefully observing and reaching deep understanding of certain kinds of people, cultures, and contexts. For the rest of us, that first "great idea" is usually a shot in the dark. Examining the idea to discover the hypotheses that are implicit in it gives the designer a platform for inquiry that will inform the project. It may also surprise and delight the designer.
Brenda Laurel on Design Research Continued
Full-Blown ideas for great, innovative products do not come from research subjects. The designer need not fear that engaging in research means that one is the slave of their findings. Design research includes the careful analysis of findings, turning them this way and that, looking for patterns. At the end of the day, well-designed research findings can spark the imagination of the designer with outcomes that could not have been dreamt of by either the research subjects or even the designer herself. Good Design research functions as a springboard for the designer's creativity and values.
You've said that good design needs to understand "deep, rolling currents of our dynamic culture." Is research the best method for divining those currents?
Well, "research" is a pretty broad term. Exploration, investigation, looking around, finding out are all synonyms for research. In the business of cultural production, exposure to popular media is essential research. Television, movies, news, games, nonfiction, science fiction-all facets of the Spectacle-can provide a great deal of information about the trajectories of change, what people long for and what they fear; what sorts of stories are told and why; how people are likely to greet particular changes in their world.
What should designers look for when doing research
The dictionary definition frames research as "Scholarly of scientific investigation or inquiry." The first step is to deliberately identify one's own biases and beliefs about the subject of study and to "hang them at the door" so as to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. One must then frame the research question and carefully identify the audiences, contexts, and research methods that are most likely to yield actionable results. Those last two words are the most important: actionable results. Often, the success of a research program hangs upon how the question is framed.
You've said that design needs to be a more "muscular" profession. How can research help in that?
Research helps design to become a more muscular profession because knowledge is power. Identifying the deepest needs of our times and carefully examining the complexes of beliefs, practices, attitudes, hopes, and fears that surround them can empower designers to do more than embroider the Spectacle. Muscular design can lift the veil and open new pathways through the challenges that confront us, from the everyday challenge of opening a bottle of medicine with arthritic hands to the global challenge of designing everything for sustainability, increasing delight while decreasing the weight of the human footprint on Earth.
Design research helps give designers empathy when designing. An understanding of the users and their environment helps designers avoid inappropriate choices that would frustrate, embarrass, confuse, or otherwise make a situation difficult for users.
Conduction Design Research
Anthropologist Rick E. Robinson has outlined three main rules drawn from anthropology for conducting design research:
You go to them. Designers shouldn't read other people's research on their research subjects from the comfort of their offices. Designers shouldn't make subjects come to them, to an artificial testing environment in an unfamiliar location. Observing the environment-where activities are performed-is an essential component of any research.
You talk to them. Designers shouldn't just read about their subjects. Nor should they only ask other people about them. Designers should have subjects tell their own stories in their own manner. The nuances of how a story is told can often tell a designer as much as the story itself.
You write stuff down. The human memory is faulty. If designers can't write down what they see and hear directly as they do their research, then they should do so immediately afterward.
What Not to Do
Years of marketing methodology have left their mark on ideas about research. The first thing that most people think of when they think about talking to users is assembling a focus group. Don't do this. Focus groups are artificial constructs that, like juries, can be swayed and manipulated by strong participants, throwing off natural results. And that's to be expected-focus group facilitators assemble people into a synthetic group in an artificial setting (usually a conference room with a two-way mirror) and pepper them with scripted questions. This is not a good way to do design research. Rule #1: You go to them.
Nor is it a good idea to rely solely on the research of others, unless they are on the design team. Without knowing the circumstances and methods of the research, designers typically can't verify that the results are good and that they record the data that is most important to the designer: what the subjects did, said, or made and the environment they were in. This dictum is especially true for data derived from marketing research. Marketing research typically focuses on demographics and attitudes-some of the least interesting data from a designer's point of view. Rule #2: You talk to them-emphasis on you.
Designers shouldn't rely on a videotape or transcript to capture what they need to remember. Reviewing audio or videotape is a tedious process and will seldom be done, except to find specific moments. Transcripts of tape, while useful, take time to create even when using a transcription service, and the designer may need the information before the transcript is complete. And there is always the possibility of that dreadful moment when the video camera doesn't record of malfunctions. Designers need to take their own research notes, both for safety and simply to focus their observations. Rule #3: You write stuff down.
Ethical Research
When conducting research, designers should strive to treat their subjects ethically. Not only is this the right thing to do, but it will yield better results, since the subjects will likely open up more if they know and feel that they (and their data) are being treated well. Ethical research requires following these guidelines:
Get informed consent from subjects. The designer should tell the subjects that he or she is conducting a research study and explain the purpose. The subject must understand what is going on and agree to participate, preferably in writing. With studies involving minors, parental or guardian approval in writing is a necessity. Exceptions to this guideline are observations in public spaces where it would be impossible of impractical to get consent from everyone in view.
Explain the risks and benefits of the study. Some studies carry with them risks. The designer may hear of see something that the subject doesn't want him or her to. The presence of a designer could be dangerous of make certain tasks cumbersome. But the designer should also explain what he or she hopes will improve as a result of the study ("We're going to build a better system for tracking shipments of ball bearings"), both to reassure the subject and to ensure good research results.
Respect the subject's privacy. Never use subject's real names or other data that might identify them. Blur of hide faces in photographs. This will ensure that anything that subjects do or say won't have personal repercussions for them.
Pay subjects for their time. People's time is valuable, and people who give some of it to provide insights to designers should be paid for it, at least a token amount. This payment doesn't necessarily have to be cash, although it should have value to the subjects.
If asked, provide data and research results to subjects. Some subjects will want to see what you have recorded and the outcomes of the research. Designers should respect these requests.
Costs and Time
One myth of design research is that it is expensive and time consuming. And while it can be-some rare design research projects cost millions of dollars and take place over years-most design research takes place over days or weeks and costs in the tens of thousands of dollars. It is time and money well spent.
The materials necessary for design research can be as simple as a notebook and a pen, or as complicated as specialized software and video-recording equipment. Ideally, a research team will have at least two of everything: two notebooks, two cameras (in case one breaks), four pens. The research team itself should consist of (at least) two people who can trade off interviewing/moderating duties during research sessions.
The amount of time spent doing research can vary widely but even a single day spent doing research will improve the outcome of the project. Ideally, however, designers will want enough time to interview and observe a representative group of users. In most cases, this will be more than 10 people, but fewer than 40. Time needs to be set aside not only for doing the research itself, but also for recruiting subjects, which can be quite time consuming itself. There are firms that, when given a set of criteria, will recruit research subjects. Often companies will have a list of customers to recruit from, and there are also ways to recruit users over the Web. However it is done, recruiting takes time. Generally speaking, most design research takes from a week to two months to execute from beginning to end.
What to Look For and How to Record It
When in the field, designers can get overwhelmed with the amount of data they are suddenly receiving. Often the designers are in a strange environment interacting with strangers. The newness of everything makes everything seem important. But the designer needs to focus on observing the things that are truly essential-namely, specific activities, the environment where activities take place, and the interactions among people that take place during activities.
Designers can help themselves focus b creating a hunt statement. A hunt statement is a tool for narrowing down what the designer is researching and why. Hunt statements typically take this form: I am going to research X so that I can do Y. X is often an activity, and Y is usually a project goal or subject area. Here's an example: I'm going to research how civil engineers use PDAs on the job so that I can build a PDA for them. Hunt statements should be developed before doing research so that there is a purpose to each piece of research. The more specific the hunt statement, the better.
Patterns and Phenomena
In the field, the main thing a designer looks for are patterns. These can be patterns of behavior, patterns in stories, patterns of responses to a question-any action of idea that keeps recurring. The rules of thumb are these:
See of hear it once, and it's a phenomenon. Write it down.
See or hear it twice, and it's either a coincidence or a pattern emerging. Write it down.
See it or hear it three times, and it's a pattern. Write a down.
Sometimes patterns won't emerge until after the research data has been analyzed. Sometimes a pattern is obvious in the midst of doing the research. Indeed, on good rule of thumb is that when you start noticing many patterns, you've likely done enough research to draw some meaningful conclusions.
Phenomena are particularly interesting to a designer as well. Unusual behaviors-especially unusual methods of working-can suggest directions that will benefit other people in their work. Say an accountant has created a different use for a spreadsheet; perhaps this approach can be built into the spreadsheet so that others can use it as well.
It's never a good idea do research alone. Having a second pair of eyes, ears, and hands is immensely valuable for observing, listening, and recording, and for discussing and analyzing the research data afterwards. Two people observing the same phenomenon can draw (at least) two distinct conclusions from it, provided both saw it in the first place. Sometimes another person can be valuable simply to help capture the rich data being observed. Patterns can be subtle and easily missed.
Field Notes
Writing down observations and key phrases is essential. Paper notebooks are best and less distracting than laptops or PDAs, unless the environment is one where a notebook may be more conspicuous, such as in an office environment.
All field notes should start the same way: recording the name of the person doing the research and the day, time, and place where the research is taking place. These details are crucial, especially for reference later in the project when these items can provide cues for recalling details. ("Remember that woman in the diner? The one we talked do last Tuesday. What did she say again?") Although the designer may record subjects' names and other data to provide compensation, for instance, this data should be kept separately from field notes, which should use pseudonyms instead of rear names to preserve that anonymity of the subjects. Another thing to leave out, no matter how tempting, are personal opinions about the subjects, the observed activities, or overheard conversations, such as "That person is an idiot." Doing otherwise is simply asking for trouble. Subjects, clients, and teammates may want to see the field notes, and showing bias in them is not only unprofessional, but bad research. Bias in research can't be helped, but it can (and should) be minimized.
It's good idea, however, for the designer to have separate area on the page to jot down thoughts and feelings that arise during the research sessions, including possible patterns. This should be a place to capture quick reflections or flashes of insight than can be explored more fully later.
Other findings that should be written down in the field notes are:
Exact quotes with indications of emphasis and tone-Bob: "I sure do love these controls" (said sarcastically).
Sketches of the locations, annotated with comments and detail.
The history, steps, and context of any activities.
Still pictures should be taken when and where feasible. Ideally, these will be printed, attached to the accompanying field notes, and annotated with captions or other notes.
Research Methods
Design research has many methods, drawn from other disciplines or created by designers over the years. These methods can be roughly divided into three categories: observations, interviews, and activities, including having subjects make things and self-report on their activities.
Whole books have been written on the methods of design research, so we will discuss only a representative sample here.
Observations
The easiest and possibly the most fruitful of all design research methods is simply observing what people are doing. Designers can covertly watch or interact with people or tag along with subjects to ask them questions about how and why they are doing what they are doing.
Fly on the wall. Go to a location and unobtrusively observe what goes on there. For instance, a designer could go to a mall and watch how people shop.
Shadowing. Follow subjects as they go about their routines. This technique usually requires permission, as the designer is following the subject throughout the day, recording what is done and said.
Contextual inquiry. A variation on shadowing, contextual inquiry involves going to the subjects' location and asking questions about their behaviors, such as "Why are you doing that? Could you describe that to me?"
Undercover agent. Observe people by interacting with them covertly. A designer who wants to know about a service can pretend to be a customer and use the service.
When conducting observations, dress not to impress. The point is to blend in with the environment so that the observer isn't the one being observed. Observers should wear neutral, nondescript clothing that is appropriate to the environment. The more observers look like they belong, the more they'll become part of the background. Bring props if necessary. Some environments require certain items for the observer to seem normal, such as a backpack in school settings, a hard-hat on construction sites, or a suit in a conservative office.
Observers should choose their locations wisely and be willing to change to another one if the original doesn't seem to be yielding good results. Observers should sit or stand in places where they can observe without being noticeable. It's best to be at an angle when observing subjects instead of directly in front or back of them, because an angle gives a clearer line of sight.
Camera phones are excellent for inconspicuously snapping photos in public spaces. Remember, however, that any such photos should be used in an ethical manner.
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