WEBVTT - https://subtitletools.com 00:00:09.540 --> 00:00:13.800 In this presentation, we look at how user research fits into your design process 00:00:13.800 --> 00:00:16.800 and when to do different types of user studies. 00:00:16.800 --> 00:00:21.600 If you decide to invest time in doing user research, it's important that you time it so that you get as much out 00:00:21.600 --> 00:00:23.740 of your efforts as possible. 00:00:23.740 --> 00:00:30.460 Here, we look at when you should do different types of user research and how research fits into the different work processes. 00:00:30.460 --> 00:00:35.640 Before you can decide when to do user research, you have to clarify *why* you're doing user research. 00:00:35.640 --> 00:00:40.080 You need different kinds of insights at different times in your design process. 00:00:40.080 --> 00:00:43.900 Let's have a look at the overall reasons for doing user research. 00:00:43.900 --> 00:00:48.180 You can do user research to ensure that you have a good understanding of your users; 00:00:48.180 --> 00:00:52.220 what their everyday life looks like; what motivates them, and so on. 00:00:52.280 --> 00:00:57.040 If you understand the people who use your product, you can make designs that are relevant for them. 00:00:57.040 --> 00:01:02.120 This type of research is typically *qualitative interviews and observations*. 00:01:02.120 --> 00:01:07.780 You can also do tests of the user experience to ensure that your design has a high level of usability. 00:01:07.780 --> 00:01:13.540 Finally, you can evaluate on the impact of your design – for instance, on the number of customers or efficiency 00:01:13.540 --> 00:01:15.560 of work processes. 00:01:15.560 --> 00:01:21.220 As you can probably see, the different types of research fit into the design process in different ways. 00:01:21.220 --> 00:01:27.500 Let's start by looking at how each type of research fits into a simplified timeline for product development. 00:01:27.520 --> 00:01:34.100 Afterwards, we'll look into how user research fits into different types of development processes. 00:01:34.100 --> 00:01:39.460 Research to ensure that your design is relevant to your users will typically be interviews and observations at the 00:01:39.460 --> 00:01:42.420 user's home or another relevant context. 00:01:42.420 --> 00:01:46.980 Since research to ensure that you create relevant products is meant to influence what type of product 00:01:46.980 --> 00:01:51.740 you will develop, most of this research takes place at the *start* of the development process, 00:01:51.740 --> 00:01:56.300 either *concurrently* with ideation work or *before* any concept work is done. 00:01:56.300 --> 00:02:01.380 You can also do research to validate your design direction, once you've developed some concept ideas 00:02:01.380 --> 00:02:05.140 that you can show prospective users or during early product development. 00:02:05.140 --> 00:02:10.300 After release, you can do the same type of research to understand how customers are using your product, 00:02:10.300 --> 00:02:15.080 to explore if they need other features or offer opportunity scoping for your next project. 00:02:15.080 --> 00:02:20.520 And that, of course, leads you back to the beginning of your next product development process. 00:02:20.520 --> 00:02:25.540 Research to ensure that your designs are easy to use is mostly done as usability tests. 00:02:25.580 --> 00:02:30.640 It's important to start usability testing as early in the design or development process as possible 00:02:30.640 --> 00:02:36.880 so that you have time to make changes to your design if the tests show that changing the design will benefit the product. 00:02:36.880 --> 00:02:43.500 If you use paper prototypes or similar materials, you can do early user testing before you have an interactive interface. 00:02:43.500 --> 00:02:49.200 User testing works well in an iterative process where you continually do user tests to ensure that your design is 00:02:49.200 --> 00:02:51.640 easy and pleasurable to use. 00:02:51.640 --> 00:02:57.460 Finally, research to measure the impact of your design mostly takes place *after* your product is released. 00:02:57.460 --> 00:03:01.400 The studies can then lead to new development and design changes. 00:03:01.400 --> 00:03:06.260 If you're working on web-based products such as apps and web pages, it makes sense to keep evaluating on 00:03:06.260 --> 00:03:09.320 the user experience after your first release. 00:03:09.320 --> 00:03:15.520 One thing is a simplified timeline, but when you can do user research and how much research you can do 00:03:15.520 --> 00:03:19.440 really depends on what type of development process you work in. 00:03:19.440 --> 00:03:24.060 You can fit user research into most work processes depending on how ambitious you are. 00:03:24.060 --> 00:03:27.400 But it's easier in some work processes than in others. 00:03:27.400 --> 00:03:33.100 Let's take a look at what a work process that's optimized for user research looks like. 00:03:33.100 --> 00:03:38.360 *User-centered design* is an overall term for work processes that place the needs and abilities of the 00:03:38.360 --> 00:03:41.540 user at the center of the development process. 00:03:41.540 --> 00:03:47.040 It's been described in different terms, but overall it's an iterative process where the first step is *user research* 00:03:47.040 --> 00:03:49.520 to ensure the relevance of the product. 00:03:49.520 --> 00:03:55.840 The second step is to *define* concepts based on user insights. The third step is *design and development*. 00:03:55.840 --> 00:03:59.020 And the fourth step is *user-testing the solution*. 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:05.140 Ideally, this iterative process continues until evaluations show that the product is ready to be released. 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:10.640 After release, evaluations of the customer experience might lead to further development. 00:04:10.640 --> 00:04:16.040 By the way, design thinking is one of the most well-known user-centered work processes. 00:04:16.060 --> 00:04:23.300 As you can see, the steps involved in design thinking are almost identical to the overall steps of the user-centered design process. 00:04:23.300 --> 00:04:28.440 When you work in a user-centered process, user research is an integrated part of that process. 00:04:28.440 --> 00:04:34.600 But, in reality, many work processes are either not like that or deviate from the basic process in different ways. 00:04:34.600 --> 00:04:41.080 So, how do you approach user research if you don't work in a clear-cut user-centered process? 00:04:41.080 --> 00:04:46.580 If research is not an integrated part of your work process and it's not up to you to change the way of working, 00:04:46.580 --> 00:04:51.020 you can still do user research, but it's up to you to decide when and how. 00:04:51.020 --> 00:04:56.040 So, let's look at some rules of thumb for deciding if, when and how to do user research. 00:04:56.040 --> 00:05:01.640 The sooner in your process you can do research, the bigger the impact of your research will be. 00:05:01.640 --> 00:05:05.820 If you can do research before development starts, you can help ensure that you work on products that are 00:05:05.820 --> 00:05:11.280 relevant to your users. If you can do research early in development, you have more time to make changes 00:05:11.280 --> 00:05:16.340 to ensure great user experience before your product is released, and so on. 00:05:16.340 --> 00:05:20.660 Sometimes, you work in projects where you're not involved in all phases of the development. 00:05:20.660 --> 00:05:25.720 But you can still do smaller research projects that influence the part of the project you *are* working on. 00:05:25.720 --> 00:05:29.720 If you're a UX designer who's not involved in early concept development, 00:05:29.720 --> 00:05:34.360 it still makes a lot of sense to do *iterative user testing* of your designs. 00:05:34.360 --> 00:05:38.820 If you don't have a process for how to handle research results, you should stick to research 00:05:38.820 --> 00:05:44.080 where you also have influence on any design changes that your research brings about. 00:05:44.180 --> 00:05:49.060 If you *are* involved in planning your development process, make sure that you schedule in some time to 00:05:49.060 --> 00:05:50.860 do user research. 00:05:50.860 --> 00:05:56.060 That way, you can be *proactive* with your research rather than reactive, so you don't have to scramble for 00:05:56.060 --> 00:06:01.620 resources when you suddenly need research to support your design decisions. 00:06:01.620 --> 00:06:06.480 Sometimes, you don't have the resources to do all the user research you'd like to do. 00:06:06.480 --> 00:06:11.920 In that case, think about which type of research will have the *biggest impact* on your particular project and 00:06:11.920 --> 00:06:14.640 prioritize doing those studies. 00:06:14.680 --> 00:06:19.680 If you have influence over how you plan your development, iterative processes are almost always 00:06:19.680 --> 00:06:23.540 preferable when it comes to getting the most out of your user research. 00:06:23.540 --> 00:06:27.560 Iterative processes make you open to changing the end goal of your design 00:06:27.560 --> 00:06:30.540 based on the results of your user research. 00:06:30.540 --> 00:06:37.540 In many projects, your time and resources to do user research are scarce. Luckily, you can do a lot with a little. 00:06:37.540 --> 00:06:42.080 You can, for instance, do user tests with paper prototypes rather than with fully interactive 00:06:42.080 --> 00:06:44.980 prototypes that require software programming. 00:06:44.980 --> 00:06:49.180 Just remember that the *validity* of your research is always the most important thing. 00:06:49.180 --> 00:06:54.480 So, if your time and resources for doing research are so limited that your results won't be sensible, 00:06:54.480 --> 00:07:00.440 it's better *not* to do any research. Best case = you'll waste your time and nothing comes from it. 00:07:00.440 --> 00:07:07.000 Worst case = insights that don't really represent the user will impact important design decisions. 00:07:07.000 --> 00:07:11.420 Similarly, if you're working on a project that could benefit from user insights but you don't have 00:07:11.420 --> 00:07:15.300 the time or resources to make any design changes based on your research, 00:07:15.300 --> 00:07:19.480 you should save your research efforts for another time when they make more sense. 00:07:19.480 --> 00:07:22.180 So, what's the take-away? 00:07:22.180 --> 00:07:28.720 User research fits into the development process on all stages, depending on why you want to do user research. 00:07:28.720 --> 00:07:34.760 When you should do research, and what type of research you can do, depends on what your work process looks like. 00:07:34.760 --> 00:07:40.760 If you work in a user-centered design process, user research is an integrated part of the process. 00:07:40.760 --> 00:07:45.300 If you *don't* work in a user-centered design process, it's up to you to make smart decisions 00:07:45.300 --> 00:07:49.424 about when and how to do research.