User research Five-step efficient completion is not a dream

Today to share a frog design (frog designs) using the research method, only 5 steps of the study method, is a senior interactive designer, the full text of the relevant books and recommended, think of the national day during the in-depth study of you can take away (￣ε (#￣) ☆╰

Yesterday, a sister in the financial sector paper spit is too difficult to grind. She asked me to open my brain. Think about it, this is you know customer: Male, 36 years old, bachelor degree; there is a MacBook Pro and an iphone 5 mobile phone, usually chrome browsing the web; there are Weibo accounts on which you will see he likes chocolate and a short foot dog; a car is a Toyota Corolla; dark brown eyes. Credit card records to see the location of his most recent hotel reservation and his favorite restaurant. Then this is all the data you have on your client, and the boss asks you if you could tell him why the client decided to transfer his savings account to another bank? You're going to think it's funny.

Indeed, with so little information, it is impossible to know why the customer left you. But not only the financial industry, user research has become a major factor in the success of all walks of life. In the Internet industry, interaction designers are likely to encounter a project where all the information they have is demographic data or Web site usage data.

We can, of course, dig up a lot of valuable information from this data based on what the user has done. But we are not aware of their motives and cannot find more effective design solutions from their websites, products or services. We need more information. User research can provide this information. User research allows us to learn about people's habits and to provide more information, inspire us, and provide more effective solutions to people's real needs. User research also avoids our personal biases, as we usually provide design solutions for people who are different from us.

So, nonsense said so much, say five steps to do with the research? I would like to share a process used by Frog (Frog design) to design and conduct user research-"research learning spirals". This spiral was proposed by one of our senior interactive designers, design research experts Erin Sanders. It has five steps, and when we need more information to complete a design or propose a solution, we can gather information through these five steps.

The name is so cool, come on, let's see what this spiral looks like:

The first three steps are about presenting and answering questions to find out what you need to know in your research:

1. The question we wish to answer. What are some of the knowledge gaps that we need to fill in the current design process?

2. hypothesis/hypothesis What we think is known. What are the assumptions of our team? What do we think we know about the user's behavior habits and possible solutions?

3. How do we fill gaps in knowledge? What research methods should we choose when time and testers are limited?

Once you have answered these questions and organized them into a page that can be presented to the relevant people to see the solution, you can begin to collect information through selected research methods.

4. Perform the collection of data in the selected method.

5. Integrate answers to the questions we want to study, confirm or falsify our assumptions. Analyze the data we collected and find the hidden opportunities and revelations.

Did you say spicy or not? We'll take a closer look at the following:

　　1 Goal: The question we want to answer

Imagine that you are in a project to design a new generation of program guides for TV viewers in Western Europe, and your team is discussing whether you should add a feature to your notebook and mobile users so they can share a short video clip with a social networking site. The team called it "video clips sharing," which sounds cool, but you can't be quite sure about the people that this feature is intended for, or the motivation that users want to use this feature.

You may want to get out of the process flow chart and code, sit down with the team, and quickly discuss what information you know and understand about the product's goals. To get the discussion going, you can let team members write down some framework questions to help them identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled. You can write these questions on a post-it note, and write a question on each post-it note to facilitate sorting and discussion.

These framework issues can be organized in a "5W1H" structure, just like an editor needs to answer when writing a newspaper story:

　　 who: "Who" helps you identify the target audience for your design work, determine their demographic, psychological data, and criteria for recruiting testers;

　　What : "What" clarifies what users might do, and what they are using on your site, application or product;

　　 When: "When" will help you determine the specific time people may use certain products or technologies, as well as the regular habits of people in their daily activities;

　　where : "Where" to help you determine where the product is used--where users typically complete a task or use a technology--and the area on the Internet or device that the user might want to visit;

　　Why : "Why" explains the emotional and intellectual motives of user behavior, and the root cause of this behavior;

　　 How is "how" can show the user through which explicit behavior to achieve the task or achieve the goal.

In less than one hours, you and your team will come up with many framework issues, such as:

"Who would share the project?"

"What frequency would they share the footage with?"

"Why do people choose to share fragments?"

When you have a series of quality framework issues, you can prioritize them and categorize the most important issues, revise them and use them as research goals. Note that the goal is not a question, but a few simple statements. These goals will define the scope of your research and appear in your research plan for one page.

Don't go too far in setting goals. The questions you want to answer, and the way you rewrite them as goals, will be the limit to how well your team will work for research. A strictly defined goal may focus on a range of characteristics of a product, ("Judging how people who don't watch television in Germany decide which programs to record for later viewing"), and that a broader range of research goals may focus more on user attitudes and behavior than on a particular product (" Study how French students allocate their spare time "). The goals you have identified need to be completed within the time schedule of the study.

In some projects, hypotheses are recorded in the form of statements and taken into account at a later time when the method of study is selected. However, sometimes you need to extract your hypotheses from the design sketches that go into the research design phase and provide a reference for the design method.

　　2 hypothesis: We believe what we already know

You've found your research goals, and you've already got some alternative design solutions in mind through team discussions. Can't you just execute these ideas?

Many people think so: all designers have a certain expectation of their products, and some users will have some ideas about the product that they want to "verify".

Generally speaking, your hypothesis will contain your thoughts on how to solve the problem, and they may play a role in the initial stage of the work. Don't be afraid to put forward these hypotheses and, when appropriate, incorporate them into the research process to help prove or disprove their value. Because:

It is critical that the hypothesis be materialized to understand the biases of the team and customers and minimize the impact of this bias.

A clear description of your hypothesis can help you choose the right research method to achieve your research goals.

You can use the early hypotheses to compare and highlight the conclusions drawn from the study. ("We initially thought [fill in the hypothesis], but we found [fill in the conclusions from the study]")

Finding a research hypothesis is simple. Take out the framework issues that helped us set our goals, and the entire team sat down for 5-8 minutes each to write their own answers or draw sketches of the design on the post-it. For example, when you consider adding video sharing to a new generation of televisions, your team members should get together and come up with a hypothesis that resembles the following statement:

Attitudes-related hypotheses: "People who watch TV and use social networks like to hear information about their friends ' favorite TV programs." ”

Behavioral-related hypotheses: "People who watch TV just want to share the clips of the shows they often watch." ”

The hypothesis associated with the feature: "People who watch TV are more likely to share a program hotspot that is also very popular among other audiences." ”

　　3 method: How to design fill our blank

Once you have identified the purpose of the study and have some design hypotheses, you can begin to think about which research methods are best suited for achieving goals. Some methods such as situational research (taking some time to observe people's daily work and life) can lay a solid foundation for you to understand how people live and explore their potential unmet needs. Usually I will select several types of combinations to use in the methods listed below:

　　Build the Foundation

Research methods in this area can include questionnaires, observations or situational interviews, as well as market or trend exploration. When you have a lack of understanding of design users, you can use these methods to understand whether this is a franchise market (with specific requirements, customer base and products), or a customer base where behavior is often changed. If you have questions about user-group characteristics-where they often go, what they do, and why-then you might want to choose a way to do that.

A research approach like card sorting can help you understand how people classify different types of information and prioritize the information about their importance. At the same time, this type of research will also allow you to discover new ideas that are likely to be critical to your interaction design.

　　Find inspiration and creativity

Research methods at this level include journal Research (Diary Studies), card Classification (cards sorting) and paper prototypes (or rapid prototyping paper prototyping), and other participatory design activities. Once I know the professional expertise and beliefs of the participants, I can start digging deeper into what content, features, and products are better able to meet their needs. These can be achieved by working closely with the participants to find solutions, or by collecting feedback from their early design assumptions.

Specifically, we can do this by collectively creating sketches, collages, simple interface examples, graphs, and other types of stimuli, or by sorting and prioritizing. These activities will help us understand how our viewers perceive the world and what solutions we can create to accommodate this view (the "mental Model"). It also helps us to answer framework questions about what is, where, when, and how. Feedback at this point does not imply the refinement or binding of design concepts or code prototypes. Instead, it opens up new possibilities.

Methods such as usability testing can help us refine and improve existing design ideas and design of Web sites or applications, as well as uncover knowledge gaps that we have not taken into account. The above show is just a regular usability test lab, in fact, there are many ways to do similar tests both at the scene and remotely, and there are a wide range of test tools to choose from.

　　Evaluation

Methods in this area may include usability testing, heuristic evaluation, cognitive walkthroughs, and paper prototypes. Once we have identified the features or content that fit the user, how do we present it in a useful and enjoyable way? I use this area of methodology to refine design comparisons, simulations, and code prototypes. This helps us answer the question "Why users would want to use a product or perform a critical task". This feedback is critical, as part of an iterative design process that enables us to refine and improve concepts to better meet the needs of our users.

Let's go back to our hypothetical example so you can see how your research aims and assumptions determine how your team will choose. With all your assumptions--I would normally use at least 100 assumptions--and put them together in a row:

You can write all the assumptions on a post-it note and classify them, and then use different research methods to determine whether they are correct or wrong.

On the left, there are assumptions about who your users are, where they live and work, what their goals and needs are. On the right, you want to make a user test to clarify the function or design assumptions. In the middle, is the type of content or function that you think is relevant to the user. This is not to determine an absolute scope for the entire hypothesis. The emphasis is on classifying hypotheses for your team and finding important or similar themes.

The second method is the paper on the prototype evaluation activities, you can write on the paper people can do video clips to share the different ways for users to choose. This approach will help you understand which solution is most valuable when users decide to share. (It is most appropriate to use both methods, because mixing different categories of assumptions together for research may create confusion for the research participants.) )

There are a number of ways you can choose to communicate with your users. I prefer to choose at least two different approaches, from listening to them sharing their stories, to encouraging them to participate creatively in some activities.

　　4) Execution: Collect data in the way we choose

The research design has been completed, the early hypotheses have been placed on the desktop, so now it is time to use the selection method to start the study. Your team will recruit 8 users to complete the research in 3 evenings, and each user has one hours of conversational time, which will ensure that you do research during the time period when they are most likely to watch TV. Make an interview outline and rehearse with your colleagues to test the results of the interview. Then, start implementing your research program on the ground.

When you start executing, it is important to rationalize your research process, capture and analyze transcripts, photos, videos, and other materials collected during field studies.

It doesn't matter if some changes are made appropriately in the field of execution. If you have nothing to change, everything is perfect, then you can only show that you have not improved. Ask yourself, "Have I found out what else I need to learn to achieve my goals?" or am I collecting information I already know? If you are not getting new knowledge, the reason may be one of the following:

You have answered your research questions, but have not taken the time to develop new questions and assumptions to go deep (otherwise, you can immediately stop the execution of the research and enter the integration phase).

Your target group is in fact not the people you are currently studying. In this case you need to change the recruitment process (and select the demographic and psychological characteristics of the target group). )

Your early design assumptions don't work well with your research goals. Consideration could therefore be given to improving existing assumptions or to making more assumptions.

The research method you chose is not appropriate. So, consider improving or changing research methods.

You spend all your time communicating with your users, without having the right time to analyze the information you are collecting.

The research team can visualize all of our data and run it through the entire research process. This helps us discover new links and patterns, and often leads us to more groundbreaking research results.

　　5) Integration: Answer research questions, and confirm or falsify hypotheses

Now that research data has been collected, it is time to find out how to answer the research questions and improve the design goals. Consolidation is a phase of finding meaning in the data, which is usually a confusing process that may mean reading a discovery between the lines, rather than directly referencing a sentence or something observed. The reason behind the data is always more important than what is.

The more time you spend in the integration phase, the more likely it is to extract more valuable meaning from the data. During the integration phase, always ask yourself and the team the following questions:

"What did I find?"

"Do we need to change our original research framework based on what we've found now?"

"Has our hypothesis been confirmed?"

"Have we found any new design points in the data?"

"What is the meaning of my design?"

"What information is most important in presenting our findings?"

"Do I need to change the design activities that I plan to do next?"

"What are some of the knowledge gaps found in the study that I might need to fill in later on?"

Your team should organize a concise, executable outcome based on the answers collected and revise the schematic to indicate the necessary changes. Now your team will have more confidence in the solution, and when the design for this feature is coded, you'll start a new "spiral" trip--Assess whether the design meets expectations.

Here are some good books about the use of research, for your reference:

Observing the user experience, Second edition:a practitioner ' s Guide to User Research14, Elizabeth Goodman, Mike Kuniavsk Y and Andrea Moed

A comprehensive guide to user research. Many of the methods mentioned in this article are described in more depth.

Universal Methods of Design15, Bruce Hanington and Bella Martin

100 kinds of research methods which can be used in the user research and design process are summarized.

METHODS:A structured approach for driving innovation in Your Organization16, Vijay Kumar

Describe the user research process in the context of product and service innovation.

Design Library17, Austin Center for Design (AC4D)

A detailed set of PDFs and worksheets that cover the processes of user research plans, methodologies, and consolidations.

Original text | David Sherwin

Translation | Chen Ruishen ', Yvonne Z

Translator's micro-faith public Number: