Research
Researcher at heart. Research is an essential part of my work. I use data to make informed decisions. I challenge assumptions. I tell you if I don’t know, and will make sure that I know.
He is an impressive and thoughtful researcher and the research has produced important insights into a rapidly changing world of older people and shopping.
Dr. Debora Price, Professor of Social Gerontology
Projects
RESEARCH EXPLAINED
Research mindset and team principles
This video is part of a series explaining research to banking colleagues in under 2 minutes.
RESEARCH TOOL
Little research guide
A printed booklet with checklists and flows, to help primarily guide non-researchers through an interview process.
Build for and with people, and iterated multiple times as part of an ongoing research project, ensuring
Simple working structure
Clear communication and prompts
Right format and size to be used in the fields
The little research guide was an invaluable tool which allowed me to know what I was doing on the day, and to actually add value to the trip.
Chris Lambert, Senior Analyst at Tesco PLC
RESEARCH EXPLAINED
Market research vs. Insight research
This video is part of a series explaining research to banking colleagues in under 2 minutes.
RESEARCH TOOL
Research wall
Created by the Government Digital Service, a research wall enables you to identify patterns within your data. Intended as vertical campfire, it is a physical artefact, as place to share your research with others as it develops.
A research wall supports the strategic aspect of the research practice. Convince stakeholders that the research process is not about ‘just talking to people’, but displaying metrics and learnings, as well as identifying patterns as they emerge.
RESEARCH INSIGHTS
Learnings from conducting diary studies
During a research project (Making it easier to shop for parents with kids aged 1-3), we used a paper diary study to inform concept generation together with research participants during one-to-one interviews in their homes. We designed our co-creation activity as a reflexive research activity, to be completed by the participants in their own time, prior to their interview. We encouraged participants to capture their experiences in both analogue and digital form. Mixing the ways in which they could document things we think is one reason why this study was successful.
Unexpected competitor analysis
By asking participants to think about alternative experiences, we actually did some competitor analysis to find out how other organisations were meeting needs related to keeping children occupied.
Considering your audience
It’s important to tailor the diary study for the people completed it, in particular we learnt to:
Keep it concise. Better to ask for less and get more detail than ask for a lot and get surface feedback.
Consider the channel. We wonder if a mobile diary study would have been more suitable for this audience, especially as we asked them to capture their experience in store on their phones.
Cut down on the words as much as possible. For some people, English isn’t their first language and having a lot of words was a barrier for one of our participants. Make it visual and make it big.
Working well as a prompt
Paper diary was great to give pause to participants to help them think about their experience. It was well received as something they could do together with their child.
Not all of our participants completed their diary study. However, even with those who didn’t complete it the physical asset of the diary study proved a great prompt for guiding early discussions.
Follow up after you send it
We felt it worked well when we called our participants to ask if they received the pack. We tried to get to know them a bit so it wasn’t so unfamiliar when we showed up at their front door.
RESEARCH COMMUNITY
Why is it important to engage people in user research?
If a tree falls in a rainforest and no one sees it, did it really happen? The same goes for research – if your insights live in a shiny report in your execs drawer gathering dust, what good did that research do to the humans that use your services every day?
The video (19 minutes) covers
Sharing your research insights and getting it into the collective design brain of your team is as important as the research itself
Techniques to use to bring the design team and stakeholders to the coal face of customer research