I served on the closing panel at the People Nerds 2022 Conference this week which had as its theme, “to shift our perspectives and processes to suit a new world of research”. The day-long conference had some great presentations and panels with innovative new ideas for UX Research. Several people have followed up with me saying that the things I presented especially around “Research Thinking” really resonated with them so I thought it would be helpful for me to expand on those ideas here.
Design Thinking
I’ve spent much of the past ten years teaching and activating teams on design thinking, or more accurately IBM’s Enterprise Design Thinking. I’ve taught executive MBA students, design students, engineering students, medical students and physicians, pan-university undergraduate students, board directors, and I’ve activated each of the parts of IBM (product, consulting, and sales) as well as hundreds of startups and enterprise companies.
It’s a powerful framework for getting all members of a team and their executives to think like designers. However, that isn’t enough. Despite my attempts to introduce some form of research into my teaching and activations, its often too little and doesn’t stick. Of course, others who teach and activate people with design thinking don’t even pay lip service to doing user experience research. They’ll start by having a group of people start filling up an empathy map off the tops of their head. I at least get someone in the group who is a targeted user to be interviewed.
Even if students or employees have some form of rudimentary research when they are introduced to design thinking, they rarely follow the guidance to insist on informing their work when doing it afterwards based on user experience research.
Innovation Theater & Pseudo-Design
I’ve used the phrase “Innovation Theater” to describe doing design thinking without research and I referred to doing design without research as “Pseudo-Design”. Whether or not teams are using design thinking or using agile development without design thinking, much design and development work today across all industries is done without having done research. As I mention in my classes, the lack of research accounts for much of the 90% of startups that fail and many of the failures in enterprise companies too.
Importance of Research
User experience research should be the foundation for product and services development. Why? In order to understand the people you’re trying to improve the lives of sufficiently to know how whatever you’re planning to create will optimally serve them. If you don’t do research, you’re flying blind. Some people also consider having talked with one or two people as user experience research. It isn’t. In fact, that’s often what startup founders do and that’s why some 90 percent of them fail.
You have to carry out research with the rigor that is commensurate with the importance of your project. If you’re trying to improve the communication on your team, a problem I often get board directors to work on, you yourself without a lot of training could interview the members of your team to identify the core issues to address. However, if your goal is to create or improve a product or service, you need someone with the appropriate education and training in user experience research to do it. Research done properly as part of a product or services team also trumps other team member’s casual conversations with clients leading to anecdotal observations.
Types of Research
Evaluative Research
The field of user experience research started with evaluative methods, most notably usability assessments. These were adaptations of academic research and emphasized rigor. The problem with solely using usability assessments often toward the end of a development cycle that was typically waterfall was that very few of the findings could be implemented. The other problem was that the research only focused on improving something that already existed.
Generative Research
The field then moved left in the development process to focus on informing what should be designed and developed. The field borrowed from anthropology and ethnography to ensure we had rigorous methods for what is now called generative research. This type of research is critically important to use in order to inform what products or services to conceptualize as well as to inform important enhancements that are needed for existing products or services. These methods discover the all-important unmet needs.
Go to Market Research
You can have the best product or service in the world but if nobody knows about it or is able to discover it, learn about it, try it out, and then buy it, you’re still nowhere. This is where go-to-market research comes in. This type of research uses generative and evaluative methods but focuses on the discover, learn, try, and buy experience. It’s important to differentiate this type of research from market research. Market research focuses on the size of the potential market, price-points, which types of clients should be targeted, go-to-market research in contrast focuses on the human experience of discovering, learning, trying, and then buying the offering. The experience includes both the digital experience of going through websites but also the experience of working with sales personnel.
Research Stakeholders
Largely due to the history of research having started with usability testing of existing designs, most researchers considered that their major stakeholder was the design team. While it is still important for researchers to collaborate with designers, there are other important stakeholders that need to equally be in the picture. Product management is a key stakeholder especially when carrying out generative research. And, marketing and sales are key stakeholders when carrying out go-to-market research. Development and engineering of course are also key stakeholders. Senior executives for each of these disciplines are key stakeholders as are the top executives of the company.
Infusing Research Thinking
All of the stakeholders and in fact the whole company or organization needs to be infused with and adopt a “research thinking” mindset. This should be accomplished through informal and formal education. All leaders and employees need a “research thinking” mindset so that they understand the need for and use of user experience research as a core practice in their organization. Just like you wouldn’t start your day without having brushed your teeth, equally you shouldn’t start a development or services project without user experience research.
Prioritizing Research
Research needs to be foundational to everything an organization does. As such, it needs to be staffed with professionally trained user experience researchers and sufficient numbers of them.
The types of research to use at any point in time needs to be determined. I advocate for doing research on this by interviewing the key stakeholders, sales, product management, and design (and others if appropriate to your business). Determine where the greatest need is and then plan the appropriate type of research to address that need.
Communicating Research Findings
The best research in the world won’t have the requisite impact if the findings from it aren’t communicated effectively. The communication of research findings needs to be designed for each of the key stakeholders who need to take action on that research.
Tracking Research Impact
The best research in the world even after it is effectively communicated won’t have the desired outcome unless the actions from it as tracked and managed to ensure impact. Individual findings and issues identified in research need to be tracked to implementation in the product or service. The ultimate impact of research should also be measured with outcome metrics like customer satisfaction and revenue. That’s not always easy but needs to be part of the research team’s work.
Research+Insights+Impact
An effective research practice should interview key stakeholders to determine what to focus on, then carry out the optimal research methods, then glean the appropriate insights and communicate them in a way that is tailored to the key stakeholders, and then track the implementation of those insights including in-process and outcome measures of impact. All of this of course requires close collaboration with other researchers and with other disciplines on the team including importantly sales, product management, and design.
Footnote
While I’ve championed and spoken about the need for research as a foundational requirement for design thinking, I’d like to acknowledge that I first heard the term “research thinking” while conducting my listening tour at our Silicon Valley Lab in San Jose during a roundtable discussion with design managers. I’d like to attribute the term “research thinking” to design manager Jessica Gore. Our conversation led to a synthesis of my own thinking that also resulted in this blog post. Thanks so much Jessica!