Day 2 (6/20) Reflection:

On the second day we were introduced to some research methods to help prepare for our interviews and observations on day three and four.  We talked with a representative at Gyro who used to do product design research.

Here are my notes:

Design Research

• What is DR
  • Coordinated activities designed to gather insights into behavior based user needs that inform and inspire the design of products and services
  • Think about the problem more than figure out the solution
  • Designing for humans—humans are extremely complex
    • Design research helps you uncover, understand and design for real use
• How do we uncover human
  • Empathy—ability to understand and share the feelings o fa another
    • If you don’t do this—only get surface
    • Why do I have to care, why does it matter to me if this product helps someone,
    • Less about what they say and more about what else they are doing (body language,
    • Example=Patricia Moore—dressed as an 80 year old woman
• Generative research—identify needs and problems to design for
• Design Machine
• Evaluative—evaluating and building on the design solutions
  • Then this becomes a cycle (Back to the Design Machine)
  • Why do DR
  • Types of DR
  • Research Activities
    • Stake holder interviews—get to know them, let them articulate their needs
    • Competitive
    • Adjacency Analysis-what is going on in a different company, city or category that you can learn from
    • Literature Reviews (web mining)-what information can I inquire that is already out there to better understand my problem and help find a solution
    • Inspirational research (“swipe”)—find inspiration anywhere and bring it to the design
    • Technology Audit—what is out there that can help or hinder the challenged
    • Observation ./ethnography—seeing in context how people are living or acting
    • Co-design/participatory design—community input opportunity, to see what deign is best of the user
    • Process
      • Plan—have goals, research, what are
        • Goal setting—if you set a hypothesis, you must know its ok to be wrong
        • Research Design—what are the activities, when and what are you going to employee
        • Recruiting/logistics—finding out who to talk to (DScout—app)
        • Discussion guides/questionnaires—make sure the questions are developed with intent, what am I going to use with the information when I get it
        • Documentation method—taking notes, audio, video etc. (it can change the dynamic if you are not careful—put a recording device out will change the way they feel and answer questions etc)
• Conduct (gather insights)—field work
  • Interviews—
    • no leading questions (people are lazy, if you give them the opportunity to agree with you, they will)—phrase it “tell me what your experience with using this product”—may need to ask the same questions 4 different ways—need to ask them the right questions
    • Listen—not about a conversation, MAKE SURE TO OBSERVE
    • Probing—“what do you or don’t you like about the product”
  • Observation (in context)
    • Find pain points—both what is good and bad
    • Compensatory behavior–When you have a product that doesn’t meet your needs, you will compensate for it to better fit their need
• Synthesize—step back and look at the data
  • It’s all about patterns
    • Occurrence of something = isolated behavior
    • Repeated occurrences=insight
• Translate—what does your data mean for design
  • Make it actionable to make it criteria
    • Observationà insight à opportunity = Criteria
• Deign (ultimately what we are trying to do)
  • Develop solutions, informed by real-world human needs
• Evaluate
  • Get user feedback on design solutions
    • Co-creation
    • Participatory design
    • Focus groups—not the greatest tool, strongest personality may take over the room—skill of moderator varies
    • Case Study—Rescue Tool—Air force Special operations Command
      • Key Insight: take a look back at all insights and see if there is something bigger than just a few frequent observations
        • “When no one’s hands are on the levers, no progress is being made”

After we learned about the research methods we learned the What, How Why method when just looking at a picture of a woman trying to change a flat tire.  Afterward we watched a video of some makers: Shinola, First2Print, and Cut Brooklyn.

They were interesting videos to show us how makers tell their story.  They all do it very differently. Check them out to see the difference.