Researching the Problem | Design Thinking 101 — Part 2
Design Thinking 101 is a weekly series of articles that explain the theory and practice of design thinking. Starting with what Design Thinking is, I go on to explain its step-by-step implementation. These are brought to life by explaining interesting examples of designers using Design Thinking to solve real-life problems.
Recap
Last week, we learned what design thinking is, the design thinking mindset and the 6-step design thinking method. This week, we will learn practical steps on how to complete the first step, doing user research.
Goal
Understand the user’s pain points, obstacles and desires.
Deliverables
Depending on the situation, it can be a persona, a competitor analysis or research report.
The Value of 5 Voices
Often when UX is mentioned, the first hurdle is convincing stakeholders to buy into the idea. Stakeholders often think user research will be costly and time-consuming. However, in practice I often find that user research reduces wasted time and effort gone into creating products that nobody wants. It is a myth that the cost will be high too, as the number of participants you need to interview can be as few as 5 users to discover 80% of all user needs, and you might need up to a crazy number like, say 10 users, if your target group is not well-defined.
Even if UX research is not as costly as you’d imagine, you might still want to be aware of these additional benefits of user research:
- Saves money and stress down the line. Solutions that are not based on real customers’ needs will never be in demand. Better to know yours is before spending months and years building it.
- Discover new ideas you never would alone. Your customers are smart, and oftentimes they would already have come up with a workaround for problems they are facing. Often these can spark new ideas for features and products.
- Develop a relationship with your customers. Once your users see you care about helping them and solving their problems, they will appreciate it and might turn into your company’s advocates.
- Findings can be used in many ways. This helps in everything your business does, from writing copy to which marketing channels you use.
- A good persona can align the whole team. When everyone on your team understands your user, they can better target bug fixes, feature ideas and marketing materials to cater to the persona’s needs. This boosts efficiency and motivation on the team.
Here are the 5 steps for user research.
Step 1: Setting the Scope
First things first, you need to know what your research goals are. This usually comes from
referring to your company’s long-term strategic plan and/or discussing your company’s goals with business stakeholders. Where do you want to be in ___ time?
If you’re looking at the short-term, ask where do you want to be in 6 months time?
If you’re looking at the medium-term, ask where do you want to be in 1 to 2 years time?
If you’re looking at the long-term, ask where do you want to be in 5 years time?
You want goals that are neither too broad nor too narrow. My team and I usually have a short brainwriting session where each of us come up with a goal, then we vote on which one we like. The goal which has the most votes wins.
After you have discovered your long-term goal, the design team can reflect on what the gaps in their knowledge are. This can be done by organising the findings in previous research projects and taking note of any questions you have. I recommend using Miro for this stage.
Step 2: Creating a Plan
After identifying your goals, it’s time to find the research methods to use. While each of these deserve an article on their own, I briefly outline the top 3 methods I use below. As they are quite simple, I’ve found that these research methods work in a variety of situations and industries.
1. Interviews
Interviews are 1-to-1 conversations with a user. It can be conducted remotely or in-person. Interviews are great for getting in-depth answers. They provide a rich body of knowledge that allows others to step into their user’s shoes. You can uncover the motivations behind their use of your product, their whole workflow and exactly how your product fixes their problems. For these reasons, they are often the backbone of your user knowledge base.
Interviews are great for team alignment as everyone can see the problems users are facing. To this end, I’d recommend having the following people involved in the interview:
- 1 user
- 1 interviewer
- 1 note-taker
- Other key team members attend and ask any questions they have while listening
It’s important to have only one user at a time so that they can be candid and not be influenced by groupthink. Having a note-taker allows the interviewer to concentrate on asking questions and having natural flow to the conversation.
2. Surveys
This is an effective way to get a lot of impressions quickly. It can be sent cheaply to your current user base via email. As surveys are like one-directional conversations, it is difficult to answer complex ‘why?’ questions with them, so open-ended questions are used infrequently. instead, use non-leading, multiple choice style questions for best results. It is better to save ‘why?’ questions for interviews and focus groups as there can be a back and forth to uncover the deeper need.
Some common things you can ask are:
- Frequency of use
- Satisfaction with current product or service
- Usefulness of new features or services
- What feature(s) would they like to see
- Communication channels (e.g. social media, email and chat apps)
You can check out survey templates to generate ideas as long as you always refer back to your research goals. Making sure that all survey questions help uncover important unknowns are a sign of a great survey.
3. Competitor Analysis
Competitor analysis is the process of monitoring, organising and gleaning insights from the available solutions in the market. It’s important to update these all the time. If you’re looking at improving a part of your flow or a specific feature, zero in on the competition’s handling of that specific problem.
In a survey conducted by Nielson Norman on 257 UX-related professionals, 78% rated direct competitors as a source of inspiration for new products and features. Competitor research is the best way to summarise the current solutions available, thus they provide fodder for generating new and better ways of providing value to your customers.
I’d just like to add a warning of mimicking solutions exactly. It is crucial to think critically about your organisation’s specific history, resources, stage of development and place in the current market, before selecting solutions to prototype. In short, what works for your competitors may not necessarily work for you. Keep that in mind when presenting your competitor analysis to stakeholders.
Step 3: Recruiting Participants
Now that you have created your research goals and selected your research tactics, it’s now time to find suitable participants.
You first need to outline who you should be reaching out to. Looking at your research plan (made up of the aforementioned research goals and tactics) will usually be enough to articulate your target participants.
Generally, there are 2 ways to find participants. First is by tapping on an existing user base. This might be an email subscriber list, social media following, previous customers or advertising directly on your platform. The second is leveraging external tools to find new, potential users. You could use recruitment companies like User Interviews, paid or organic social media or your team’s personal and professional network.
Whichever method you choose, remember to look for expressive people. You want people who are good at articulating their ideas out loud. Also, use a screener survey to find participants that match your target group’s psychographics (interests, background, goals, tech-savviness etc.) and demographics (age, gender, location etc).
Step 4: Conducting the Study
With all the preparation done, if you’re like me you’re probably itching to start getting some data! It’s also normal to also feel a little nervous, especially if this is your first time doing user research.
I remember my first interview — gosh I was so nervous! But let me assure you, this is normal. You will get better with practice and it’s not realistic to expect perfection right from the start. Don’t worry, research shows that practicing will eventually make you a pro!
There are lots of different research tactics, with each of them requiring their own prep work beforehand and reflection afterwards. I’ll be going more into them in future posts. For now, just know that a clear execution plan goes a long way.
Step 5: Summarising the Results
After you have collected the data, you need to make sense of it. I’d recommend you do affinity mapping with the design team. Affinity mapping is the process of grouping related pieces of evidence so that you can deduce a single finding. It’s a bit like detective work where you gather all your clues together before uncovering a deeper truth.
The steps to affinity mapping are simple, but it’s effectiveness depends on the quality of the evidence and experience of the team drawing the conclusions. After doing this, you will be able to create a persona or research report, both of which deserve their own (or a few) blog posts!
Conclusion
And that’s it! We are living in an era of experiences where we have high expectations for any product or service. User research is the first step to standing head and shoulders above your competition.
Stay tuned for the next article about defining the scope of your problem, posted next week!
Hi! I’m Rebecca, a UI/UX Designer based in sunny Singapore. Having used design thinking as both an in-house designer and freelancer, I have worked on both smaller, usability issues and long-term, complex problems. In my spare time, I can be found passionately reading up on sustainable design or playing squash (the sport, not the vegetable). Connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram or my website.
