No Design without Research

Memi Beltrame

Image Attribution: Flickr User (nz)dave

Frontend conference Zurich 2012

No Design without Research

Trust me

THis is you:

DesignerAll they Everwant is PONies

your Customer:

The Price you payfor making BusinessDrinkable

Rainbows! Want!!!

«They‘re Never Gonna Pay for it»YOUR MISSION

Make the Customer want to have the best for the users

Research

W. Edwards Deming

« In God We trust,The rest Bring Data »

Gut feeling takes you only so far.(So does research, btw)

Bene!ts of Research

★Handles Assumptions★Helps to understand★Helps to focus

Research confronts existing assumptions.

Customers stick to their assumptions.

Relentlessly.

Focus on what matters

You Don‘t Sell Features, You Built Features.You Sell Benefit.Mike Monteiro

You Don‘t Sell Features, You Built Features.You Sell Benefit.Mike Monteiro

Barriers to Research

★Money (and time)

★Assumptions on Scope

«They‘re Never Gonna Pay for it»

Money

Let the customer say no.

Don‘t Low-Ball, Don‘t Foreclose

The Price you payfor making Business

Research:

«We know what we want, Here are the Specs »

Scope

Say No.Implementing specs is not design, it‘s decoration

«We Need a Redesign»

«We Need a Redesign»

«I Need A Bypass»

«We did Market Research»

Scope

OFTEN FOCUSES ON THE PEOPLE who buy the Product

and IGNORES THOSE Who use it

Market Research

Catfood

Types of Research

★Other‘s Research★Stakeholder Research★User Research

Other‘s ResearchGET it!

IT‘S CHEAP!

10% of men are color blind

1 in 10 men can‘t see a difference here:

Smartphone Operating Systems in CH

10%4%

6%5%

23%

52%iPhone

Android

Others

Windows

Symbian

I don‘t know

Stakeholders

Identifying Stakeholders★ Decision Makers

★ Funders

★ Champions

★ Showstoppers

★ Affected People

You should get to say who has a seat at the table.

Stakeholder Research★ Get to know the business

★ Find out about strategy & scope

★ Learn about perceived risks

★ Content Strategy: Find out about the creation, delivery and governace of content

Stakeholder research

➔ Determine Target-groups:Who are we focussing on, who explicitly not.

Strategy & scope

Stakeholder research

➔ Elevator pitch: Formulate a concise vison for the project

Strategy & scope

Strategy & scopeStakeholder research

➔ Business value poker: find out which parts of the project matter to the customer.

Risk assessmentStakeholder research

➔ „Pre Mortem“ activity to give the customer an early opportunity to express fears

Content StrategyStakeholder research

A Note of Warning

Content StrategyStakeholder research

★ Content Audit: assess all available content and define its state (Redundant, Outdated, Irrelevant)

★ Define what is to happen with the content until when

★ Help establish ownership & responsibility

Content Audit

Crucial

Trivial

Short-livedLong-Lasting

Automate

Get Rid of

➔ The usage of real data for designsimplies the existence of real data!

Users

QuantitativeQuantitativeHow many? How often?Why and how?

Contextual InquiryObservation

Analysis

InquiryWhat people say

What people do

What people didObservation

Focus Groups

Unstructured interviews Surveys

Structured Interviews

User Diary

Userstatistics

User Research Methods

Source: Moser, Chistian „User Experience Design“. 2012, Springer Vieweg

User Research★ Find out what users really need★ Find out how they react to your

work★ Find out how they behave

Find out user needs

➔ User workshops

➔ Card sorts

User research

Find out user needsUser research

★ User interviews

★ User observation

Find out user reactionUser research

➔ Test running site to find out shortcomings

Find out user reactionUser research

➔ Test prototypes in user tests

Find out user reactionUser research

➔ Test navigations in tree-tests

Find out user behaviourUser research

➔ Analyse Server Logs and User Data

Find out user behaviourUser research

★ Site search Analysis

★ Use Anlytics to create funnels and track user behaviour

Resources

Kristina HalvorsonMelissa Rach

Dave GraySunni BrownJames Macanufo

Kim Goodwin

Books

Tools

http://silverbackapp.com

http://www.optimalworkshop.com

Recap

Do research.It‘s good for you.

Thanks!On Twitter: @bratwurstkomet

I work at Liip, Zurichhttp://liip.ch