The meta-thinking of user research: acquiring, refining and transforming

Article Description: User Research trilogy: Strategic Thinking about user research.

"Meta-thinking" of user research

Delving into any field is inseparable from "meta thinking", or "strategic-level thinking": Thinking about the fundamental issues it is going to solve, thinking about its core approach path, and thinking about the biggest challenges it faces. User research is.

The biggest challenge for user research is the gap between research and design, that is to say, the results of research are often difficult to fall, and it is difficult to play a direct and visible role in product design and innovation. Therefore, a "user research useless theory" view in the industry quite a market, one of the most widely cited Ford man quotes seems to be the strongest evidence: "If I had asked the customer what they wanted, they would have told me, ' a faster horse '."

Although this "useless theory" is based on the most vulgar understanding of user research (because only the reporting of user expectations is not a user "research"), but the researchers also need to re-examine the field of philosophy, methods and strategies. Are we missing something important? Is it that we lack a deeper thinking? Even if we lose our way?

Thinking alone is not enough.

In a great deal of literature on user research that I've studied, most of them discuss the specific methods of user research and how to use them, which is a hodgepodge, including on-site observation, ethnography (participatory observation), shadow following, in-depth interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, diary method (Cultural exploration), log analysis, Affinity graphs, personas, mood boards, semantic differences, metaphor extraction techniques, laboratory tests, eye tracking, and experience sampling methods, etc. In the use of these methods, there are some common pitfalls, typically "for methods": to apply a method with a certain degree of praise, without looking at the specific research objectives and research background of the case. And I think that before any project can be implemented, a "method redesign" must be carried out for the project's objectives and core features, which may be the revision and refinement of the underlying methodology, or the combination and blending of several methods, and the use of any method of applying mechanically is bound to cause problems.

Further, thinking at the methodological level does not essentially improve the quality and level of a user's research, as these discussions do not rise to "meta thinking" and are unable to answer basic questions such as: What is a good user study in essence a process? How to develop the strategy of user research? How to use the facts to respond to the "use of research useless" query?

The trilogy: Acquiring, Refining, transforming

A good user research design must include the whole process design under the specific goal orientation and the strategy design for the difference of the project. a complete user research process should include three parts: acquisition, refinement, and transformation , which I call the "User Research trilogy". The so-called "access" means to obtain the "user side" of the original ecological information, can be understood as "exploration" and "detection"; refining "refers to the extraction of the product has a revelation of the value of information points, can be understood as" deep excavation "and" insight ", the so-called" transformation "refers to the value of information points into product design and innovation of the program or related recommendations, can be understood as" Refactoring "and" creation ". Every part of this trilogy is critical and challenging.

The best way to respond to the "useless Theory of research" is to put the trilogy into place: Get real and comprehensive user-side information, extract valuable data ideas and translate them into conceptual innovation and design improvements for the product. The so-called "strategy design for the difference of the project" is to analyze the project's goal and feature especially after the special difficulties, and to make a specific consideration and optimization on how to deduce the trilogy.

However, in all kinds of research practice, we are less likely to think and design our research at this higher level, so there is often a "cop-out": we try our best to understand the user, but we don't know how to refine the results, and we don't realize the importance of turning research "discoveries" into product "inventions". The common "lost dance steps" are as follows:

"There is access, no refinement, no conversion" type: this kind of research gets a pile of raw data (note: This article "Data" refers to the broad sense of data, numbers and qualitative description are included), with the research of the demand side (such as product managers) directly to the data back to their own analysis, The user researcher is only a runner and Maixiao, and the product manager may lack the ability to analyze the data, and there is a risk of misuse and misuse of the data.

"There is access, no refining, there is transformation" type: This kind of research is more dangerous, get a pile of raw data, not to carefully comb, not to analyze the deep meaning of user information, not to induction, summary and verification, direct conversion to product requirements, users say what to add to the product, The equivalent of what Ford famously accused of.

"There is access, refinement, no conversion" type: This kind of research is easy to be blamed for "no work", "play virtual", such as sometimes spent a lot of time to extract a number of characters, and finally found that do not know how to use, how to provide direct help for products.

"No gain, no refinement, transformation" type: the most typical is to use the "brainstorming" to replace solid research work, thinking that brainstorming is omnipotent artifact: not to actually understand the user's thinking, think as long as a few people in the meeting room collision can be all the problems are clear. In the absence of acquisition, any refinement, transformation has become a source, there will inevitably be a variety of risks and problems.

Meta-thinking about "getting"

Of the current methods of user research, 80% is about how to get "user side" information. Therefore, it can be said that the industry in this stage of accumulation is the richest. However, I find that there is still little strategic thinking about how to "get". In the "Get" stage, the biggest difficulty is not how to implement specific methods (how to interview, how to compile questionnaires, etc., although this also requires a lot of skills and cultivation), but how at the strategic level for how to "get" design.

This design is embodied in the following: Before the implementation of "Access", a detailed and thorough research plan should be developed. To develop this plan, usually need to include " problem definition", "Method Design" and "detail perfect" three links. The so-called "problem definition" is to think about and explore what the real purpose of the study is to solve a problem. This link requires researchers to the background of the project and the products involved have a more in-depth understanding of the problem can be defined clearly, but also pay attention to the demand side of the research needs may be vague and superficial, not directly as a problem definition, but need to re-examine the researcher and thinking. The so-called "method design" is described in the previous "method of redesign", in the definition of good questions, based on the design of targeted methods, please see the next section of the specific deployment. The so-called "perfect details" means to carefully consider the various details of the implementation of the study, through "scene rehearsal" to envisage the user's possible response, early detection of possible problems, and to avoid.

In the "Method design" loop, the first question to consider is, under the current problem definition, what kind of information we need, is the user's behavior, or the user's attitude, experience, ideas, or the user can not directly express the subconscious, or several combinations. In this way, we can divide all the "access" methods into three categories: the methods of acquiring behavior information, consciousness information and subliminal information, the first two methods are familiar and commonly used, and for subconscious methods, the importance of exploring the subconscious is not fully understood, so it is often neglected. Methods of obtaining behavioral information are observed on the spot, participatory observation, shadow following, log analysis, laboratory test, eye movement analysis and so on; there are deep visits, focus groups, questionnaire surveys and so on. The methods of obtaining subliminal information include emotion board, metaphor extraction technique, semantic difference method, Kelly square technique and ladder method. In the practical research, we should consider the characteristics of specific projects and the research difficulties, and make specific optimization and improvement on the basis of general methods to meet the particular research objectives. At the same time, it is often necessary to combine several methods, because any kind of method, whether the exploration of behavior, consciousness or subconscious, can only understand a user's side, a silhouette, comprehensive methods can guarantee the acquisition of comprehensiveness, on the basis of refining and transformation is more meaningful.

The meta-thinking about "refining"

In the usual research methods, about 15% of the methods are for the "refining" stage, such as coding technology, affinity graph, personas, Indi Young's mental model method, as well as a variety of statistical methods of mining data phenomena. But compared with the "acquisition" stage, the method of "refining" is far from sufficient and mature. In the practice of user research, it is necessary to constantly grope for the innovation and optimization of the refining method.

However, no matter what kind of refining method, there are some common steps to follow, I summed up for the collation, exploration and verification of three links. Collation is to filter the user data obtained, sorting and organizing, with the aim of excluding some data murmur also facilitates the next section of work; exploration is the deep meaning behind digging up data, exploring and understanding the phenomena of data, discovering various possibilities, and finally deleting several high probability hypotheses Verification is the data phenomenon found in the last link, further proof that it is true and effective, in this link, do not have to adhere to the current research data, but also can combine other sources of information (such as various public studies), using comprehensive evidence to reduce the risk of false conclusions. The reason for the "exploration" and "verification" separately, is because many times, we tend to be too subjective opinion of the dominant, eager to verify some assumptions, but neglected to explore more possibilities, to find more things that were not aware of the original.

At present, many researchers in the "refining" phase of the dilemma encountered is, as a result of the lack of systematic exploration of refining methods, it is mistaken to think that only "personas" is a refinement method (or refining perspective), no matter what research, not to investigate the differences in the purpose and characteristics of the study, without hesitation to engage in personas, The results were fit and diametrically opposed.

Meta-thinking about "transformation"

Compared with the first two stages, the transformation phase of the researchers is the greatest test. How to "transform" the method of discussion, in the industry is also the most scarce, probably only 5% of the method is about "transformation", such as brainstorming. But even brainstorming does not essentially tell us how the "transformation" is going to work. Therefore, the exploration of transformation method is an important and urgent subject.

In my current limited understanding, to do a good job of transformation, first of all, to break through the "user researcher" of the identity set, to try to analyze and understand the specific products, to have a profound and systematic product thinking . If this is not the case, researchers may often suggest products that are more "childish" and "laughable". Because between "creative" and "valuable creativity", often still separated by a few street distance, the creation is not difficult, difficult is how to set the overall product in the context of the constraints, the most realistic, most enforceable, most effective, least risk, the most no side effects of creativity.

In addition, on this issue, there is a common point of view, that is, "transformation" should be done by product managers or designers, with research as long as the research on it. It is true that product managers and designers, of course, should be based on the conclusions of the research to do the transformation, to do product innovation and improvement, but this does not mean that the use of research does not need to touch this work. Because there is inevitably loss and distortion in the process of information passing between different minds, product managers and designers understand that using research reports may just be a small subset of the researcher's experience system, and that the user researcher, who is the most deeply understood user, has the responsibility to translate this understanding into product recommendations and find out " Landing ", but only so, can reflect the ultimate value of user research.

"Variation Trilogy": Transformation, acquisition and refinement

If we successfully implement the three stages of acquiring, refining and transforming, we can normally get something that is valuable to product innovation or design. But this trilogy process can only contribute to the innovative approach of "user-driven product innovation", in reality, many valuable and even great innovations are not necessarily found through user research, but may be triggered by technological breakthroughs, or by the thinking and insight of a product manager or designer, It could be anyone's inspiration. So for these forms of innovation, it is not the user research what? Of course not. Any form of innovation, as long as it is to market, it is necessary to accept the user's test, so the user research should be in advance assessment of these innovations.

So how to evaluate it? There are two common types of methods that I call "30-point method" and "60-point method":

The so-called "30-point method" is to ask the user "Our future of this product will have XX function, may I ask this function you want to do?" "I have said in previous articles that users cannot make the right and stable judgments about an imaginary function, and that the results obtained by this method may be far removed from the user feedback that is available after the product is officially marketed." So this method can only take 30 points.

The so-called "60-point Method" is: to draw the concept of the product of the minimum real or even high-fidelity prototype, to the user to see, let it make evaluation. The benefit of visualization is to let users have a more intuitive understanding of the product, so that the feedback from the actual deviation will be greatly reduced, but the prototype product is still an imagination, so this method can only take 60 points.

Besides, I think there is a "90-point method". is to "reverse" the concept of innovation, based on this concept, in turn, it is possible to envision the actual user scenario in which it is most likely to apply (if it is a futuristic scenario that does not yet exist, to comb through realistic scenarios that are closely related to the future scenario), and the researcher can then do a rigorous user study based on these scenarios, To find out if users have such or such pain points or needs in these scenarios, and whether these pain points or requirements can be solved with the current concept of innovation, and whether these scenarios are sufficiently universal and typical. The first step of the above process is to transform the concept of product innovation into a research topic that aims to explore the user's existing experience rather than user's imagination, and then analyze and explore the subject systematically. So I call this process the "Variation Trilogy" of User research: transformation, acquisition and refinement. The above "30 points method" and "60 points method" problem lies in: ignores the product characteristic system and the user psychological system existence an eternal gap, here needs a "translation" process, namely carries out the necessary transformation, but cannot directly carry on "obtains" the work.

By applying the "Variations Trilogy", you can rigorously validate and evaluate the ideas of product innovation and improvement in your organization, which can greatly reduce the risk of innovation failure.

User research: Endless exploration

User research is the key part of product innovation system, is the source and guarantee of product innovation, in this sense, the overall level of user research practice has also affected the ultimate ability to upgrade our country as a "big country". Today this article on the long lingering in my mind of the thinking of the comb, to share with you, is the hope to provoke some discussion and resonance, especially for "How to think on the strategic level and improve the user research" This problem, can lead to more people's thinking and exploration.

I deeply appreciate that user research is a difficult task: it solves the unknown, explores possible, it travels through thick mist, listens to noisy noises, its left side is human nature, the right is physical, it is a bridge, is the ropeway, is the enzyme, it carries a lot of expectations and dreams, but also face too many unable to crack the mystery of the Bureau ... The search for user research is endless, on the road.