Like one of ‘those’ jokes, design research has the most impact to those who were there in the moment.
In this video – from a presentation hosted at eBay Design in San Francisco – I explain how I try to help client teams discover their own punchline from user research, by designing experiences for them rather than delivering findings to them.
It’s an ‘audio over slides’ clip and I recommend you watch it in the video player,
I talked through how I use:
- curated video,
- facilitated workshop activities,
- and large scale visuals
…to help teams get closer to insights from research, and have greater motivation to act on them.
This session is an introduction and ‘how to’ for an easy-to-adopt method. It’s relevant to anyone who shares research findings and wants the insights to inspire their team.
Huge thanks to Pree, Andrew, Lindsay and Hannah at eBay design for hosting me, and to my clients who trust me to feel the way towards the best approach to their projects.
I spoke with Dan Makoski about how to make impact with design research.
He spoke from experience about the sometimes surprising outcomes of participatory design.
…Always learning.
Nick, You’ve done an excellent job at explaining how and why facilitating experiences is more valuable than merely transferring the information you have learned.
Many of my clients think the job of a researcher is to gather facts about customers and put these into a spreadsheet of ‘user needs’. Whereas, the real power of qualitative research is it’s ability to engender empathy. We should be aiming to change how people in companies think and feel about their customers on a personal level.
Qualitative research can have a dehumanising effect within organisations. Team see customers not as complex individuals, but as mere percentages and KPIs, or worse still, pawns to improve a Net Promotor score.
When companies get larger and larger, those working for them become more and more detached from their customers. We need to help them get out of their mono-culture and immerse them into the lives of the people that have to use their product or service. I believe that emotional connection between client and customers is the foundation stone of good design.
Thanks so much for posting this in the google group. Just the right information I needed at this moment, as I’ve been casting about for what I’ve been thinking of as “immersive” reports. This is a totally inspirational template and I just ordered your book too! Thank you!