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Design research

Ok so… “I am a designer”

After decades of thought still no clear understanding, other than creative and out-of-the-box.

“Design has existed as a discipline for over 60 years, but there still seems to be an enormous gap between what we designers think we do, and what people recognize we can do. (…) Designers are pretty good at thinking creatively and ‘outside of the box’.”

(Maria Beatriz Vivas a.k.a. @VivasBea ~ Behaviorial Design Lab)

Manipulation and design

That’s what you get when business takes on design.

“Manipulation is deceptive. Design should be supportive. Theoretically, the two are separated by intention. But increasingly, in practice, the two forces are converging. This may be inevitable, as fields of sales, marketing, and design collide. I hope not. I’m troubled by the collision, and how it manifests in digital products.”

(Jon Kolko a.k.a. @jkolko ~ UX Magazine)

Using scenarios to design intuitive experiences

Using a mind machine intuitively depends on your expertise.

“Scenarios can represent the ideal picture of a user’s experience with a product or service because you can see how and when they’ll interact. However, a scenario is often missing the details of what’s going on at this moment in time and that can be a sticking point. This is where the value of the journey map emerges.”

(Kim Goodwin a.k.a. @kimgoodwin ~ UIE Brainsparks)

Generating new business by design thinking

Business thinking going downhill; design thinking going uphill. An uphill battle that is.

“(…) several conclusions can be drawn. First of all, the typical iterative and holistic way of working of design thinking is also a viable option for generating business. Possibly many of you design thinkers will say: we knew that. Point is: our stakeholders needed to learn that! Second, we were amazed by the results of the ‘business prototype’. Many new insights arose, and admittingly some of our assumptions turned out wrong. A next step will look different already. For a relatively small amount of money and resources this was learned, instead of the hard way in actual business. Third, and possibly most important: it created a platform all stakeholders could look at, reflect and decide. They could invite others, including even their friends. They could discuss with us. Suddenly it was not a ‘good idea’, but a viable option.”

(Guido Stompff ~ Design in Teams)

It’s not enough to change the light bulbs: A conversation with Brenda Laurel

Brenda presents a holistic view of technology, humans and the planet Earth.

“I see us developing technologies and design practices that reduce cognitive distance for people who use them. I hope that we will continue to create alternatives to the trivial pursuits currently favored by the marketplace. (…) Technology is an extrusion of the human spirit.”

(Julia Moisand Egea ~ Adaptive Path)

Design ROI: Measurable design

Design trying to gain legitimacy through business thinking.

“The Design ROI project was a research project conducted between September 2011 and September 2012 with the aim of developing a model and a set of metrics for measuring the return on investments in design. The project was funded by Aalto University, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (Tekes) and fifteen member agencies of the Finnish Design Business Association (FDBA).”

(Antti Pitkänen)

Researching user experience: A knowledge ecology model

Tacit knowledge on the cognitive principles of instructional design gets revitalized in my brain.

“If information is only secondary to knowledge in terms of usefulness to achieve a particular goal or purpose, this finding suggests that the UX field could advance by looking beyond interacting with information and towards a more holistic, ecological view that encompasses both information and knowledge user experiences. A key question here could be: How do we create a user experience that facilitates tapping into the different forms of knowledge found within people’s heads? Thinking about people as users of knowledge rather than just users of information opens up a whole new terrain of potential design, thus moving from information user experience to knowledge user experience.”

(Faye Miller ~ Boxes and Arrows)

Associating UX changes to the Net Promoter Score

Or connecting UX with CX in a quantitative way.

“A bad experience will impact how likely users are to recommend a website or product to a friend. Fixing those bad experiences is critical to increasing positive word of mouth. Unfortunately, there are usually too many things to fix and just as many opinions on what should be fixed. Development teams need to prioritize.”

(Jeff Sauro a.k.a. @MeasuringU ~ Measuring Usability) ~ courtesy of barbarakoop

Design process is a myth

Just a set of steps a.k.a. process in ‘hinzeit’.

“Typically, when a product design falls flat, people want to insert a design process to fix the bad design. However (…), a one-size-fits-all design process does not exist. Don’t force a process on a design team that everyone must follow. Every designer has their own unique way of solving design problems. Bad product design is fixed by hiring good designers not by adopting a better design process.”

(Marc Hemeon a.k.a. @hemeon ~ Medium Design/UX)

User (experience) research, design research, usability research, market research: A changing, interconnected world

Whatever it takes to feed your understanding of people, as consumers, users or patients.

“When I was in a management role at Yahoo!, we discovered that market researchers were encountering some of the same obstacles as our UX researchers – obstacles to being appropriately involved upstream in the process to have a more strategic impact on the company. So UX research began to partner with market research in an effort to attain that involvement.”

(Richard Anderson a.k.a. @riander ~ UX Magazine)

Five must-dos in designing an emotionally engaging experience

It’s so easy. It just takes five.

“As customers’ expectations change rapidly driven not just from you, or what happens in your industry but also by other companies they deal with who lead the way (e.g. Amazon, Apple, Starbucks etc.) you need to constantly innovate. There are fewer innovations when people are afraid to do errors. We have recently gathered former clients from different parts of the world who had a success with their customer experience programs and one thing was common that led to their success – the room for trial and error they had.”

(Zhecho Dobrev a.k.a. @Zhecho_BeyondP ~ Beyond philosophy)

Rethinking design thinking

Design thinking says what it is, thinking.

“So three cheers for design thinking, for those practitioners and schools that are using these techniques, that encourage breakthrough thinking, and that encourage asking the stupid question. Not all schools teach design thinking in this way. Not all students learn it. Not all designers practice it. But for those who do teach, learn and practice all of the techniques of design thinking, it can be transformative.”

(Donald A. Norman ~ Core77)

Multi-dimensional analysis of dynamic human information interaction

Studies and research for our fields of practice are important parts of our fundaments.

“This study aims to understand the interactions of perception, effort, emotion, time and performance during the performance of multiple information tasks using Web information technologies. (…) The results of this study can be employed as a theoretical foundation for designing human-friendly, adaptive user interfaces, which function as intelligent and affective central mechanisms and help users prioritise, monitor and coordinate their needs/tasks/goals effectively and efficiently. This study introduces the emotional factor, which is a newly emerging dimension, in dynamic information seeking and retrieval contexts and enlightens the existing areas of human information interaction.”

(Minsoo Park ~ Information Research 18.1)

What is the client’s role in user research?

Balancing client and user requirements? Out of balance mostly in fav of client.

“Successful user research involves close collaboration between clients and researchers to ensure that the research focuses on the right issues and provides acceptable recommendations. So, in this edition of my column, I’ll speak directly to the clients of researchers about the steps they should take to stay involved throughout a user research project and ensure its success.”

(Jim Ross a.k.a. @anotheruxguy ~ UXmatters)

Some thought on user experience in corporate research

The relevance of user experience design in business contexts is mounting rapidly.

“This presentation is divided into two parts. The first part is about setting the stage a bit, and in order to do so I will address the interrelations between some of the changes the telecom industry is facing, and how corporate research and innovation relate to these. In the second part I will illustrate how we at Ericsson Research recon that user experience plays a role in all of this.”

(Cristian Norlin a.k.a. @cristiannorlin ~ Ericsson UX blog)

Five UX Research Pitfalls

Be careful not to fall in any of them. Other mistakes still ahead.

“More and more organizations view UX as a key contributor to successful products, connecting teams with end-users and guiding product innovation within the organization. Though it’s fantastic to see this transition happen, there are growing pains associated with becoming a user-driven organization. These are the pitfalls that I see organizations grappling with most often.”

(Elaine Wherry a.k.a. @elainewherry)

When You Shouldn’t Use Fitts’s Law To Measure User Experience

Fitts’ law is a principle for UI design; not an evaluation method for UX.

“The key statement of Fitts’s Law is that the time required to move a pointing device to a target is a function of the distance to the target and its size. In layman’s terms: the closer and larger a target, the faster it is to click on that target. This is easy to understand, not too difficult to implement and it doesn’t seem to make much sense to contradict such a simple and obvious statement.”

(Anastasios Karafillis ~ Smashing Magazine)