The 9 Rules of Design Research
Maintaining a research mindset means realizing that bias is rampant, certainty is an illusion, and any answer has a short shelf life. A good question is far more valuable in the long run. And you can’t ask good questions—meaning you can’t learn—until you admit you don’t have the answers.
Anxiety around looking less knowledgable runs deep.
And this also means people try to extract knowledge from bad data. Like an NPS score.
- Get comfortable being uncomfortable
- Ask first, prototype later
The danger in prototyping too soon is investing resources in answering a question no one asked, and ignoring the opportunity cost. Testing a prototype can help you refine an idea that is already good, not tell you whether you’re solving the right problem.
- Know your goal
Often, in the enthusiasm to embrace research, teams will start talking to customers without a clear, shared goal.
Only after you have a goal will you know what you need to know. And you have to know your question before you can choose how to answer it.
- Agree on the big questions
The big research question is what you want to know, not what you ask in an interview.
Design research gets conflated with user research all the time. Talking to representative users is just one of many ways of answering high-priority research questions. Not everything you need to know is about users.
- There is always enough time and money
Often, teams have to ask permission of someone with authority in order to do work that is categorized as research. Asking questions is inherently threatening to authority.
If you are clear and candid about your goals and high-priority questions, you can learn something useful within whatever time and budget is available to you. Find studies online. Go outside during lunch and observe people. Usability test someone else’s product. Get creative.
- Don’t expect data to change minds
The whole point of gathering evidence is to make evidence-based decisions. If that evidence undermines or contradicts the ideas of beliefs of the person with authority to make decisions, they will find reasons to reject it or ignore it.
- Embrace messy imperfection
Figuring out the best way to solve problems for people requires some time out in the real, messy world and letting go of a certain amount of control. While an ethical, sufficiently rigorous approach is necessary, there is no qualitative clean room. A clear goal and a good question can withstand all sorts of unpredictable conditions.
Incorporating evidence into design decisions is itself a learning process. You will never find the right answer and be done. If the process is working, you will continue to make decisions with increasing levels of confidence.
- Commit to collaboration
Research without collaboration means that one group of people is learning and creating reports for another group to acknowledge and ignore. Knowledge leaks out of even the most well-meaning teams working like this. Collaboration without evidence means everyone has tacitly agreed whose personal preferences win. Neither of these is the most productive approach.
The whole point of asking questions is to establish a shared framework for making decisions so that you can make better decisions faster.
- Find your bias buddies
In sum, what we’re talking about when we’re talking about design research is really doing evidence-based design. Creation, criticism, and inquiry are all integral parts of the design process. Separating them leads to optimizing for the wrong things out of ignorance, ego, or fear.
When it comes to interpreting the results of research, collaboration becomes particularly critical. Everyone with a human brain is burdened by human biases.
It doesn’t matter what questions you ask or how you find the answers, as long as you are ethical in your approach, honest about what you know, and apply yourself towards a worthwhile goal. There is no one right way and no one right answer. Enjoy the uncertainty! It never ends.
Posted on February 21, 2020