User Experience Research Methods

The design thinking approach is one that has only grown in prominence as the years have gone on. Big companies like Google and Apple are applying the approach and it’s being taught in many of the top universities around the globe. Design thinking can also be applied to almost any kind of innovation, not just design. Over the past several weeks, I’ve gone in depth on the design thinking process, mainly the first half of it.

As a designer myself, I was very familiar with the concept of design thinking, including many of the artifacts they can include such as Persona’s and Empathy Maps. Despite this, I’ve never gone as in depth with design thinking as is possible. Much of my knowledge is brief overviews for each phase of the process. For this process, I went through seven week long modules, each steadily progressing in the design thinking process. Even with my previous experience, there was still much to learn in terms of the design thinking process.

 Week 1: Design Thinking Overview

To begin the process, we did a quick overview of design thinking with two different tasks. For the first, I just had to write a post explaining what my idea of design thinking is. For the other though, I got to perform a pretty interesting experiment with a partner.

This video simply teaches the basics of design thinking in a little under two hours. What makes it so effective though is how hands on it was. Everyone had their own partner and each section of the crash had a time limit, helping spur people’s creativity. It’s also not just interviews and talking, both partners got to make a physical version of whatever their idea was using various scraps. Overall, I found this a great refresher for design thinking and was pretty happy with my final design considering the time limit

 Week 2: User Psychology

Starting with this week is when I began being introduced to some new methods in the researching process for design thinking. The method for this week was the feel and need statements. While they were brand new, I found them quite intuitive to use. You always have some kind of thought or feeling when browsing a website or app, so all these statements do is document those feelings.

To test them myself, I was tasked with a website analysis for two similar sites I used, with the sites I choose being two baseball stat sites, baseball-reference.com and fangraphs.com. What was most intriguing is how despite it seeming obvious, you definitely gain a better understanding of why you do and don’t like certain sites. I always knew I found baseball-reference lacking, but by documenting my feelings when I used those lacking parts, it made it easier to understand why lacking those parts is such a big deal

 Week 3: User Empathy

This week began the start of the traditional design thinking phases with empathy. Compared to last week, the research method used here was a lot more familiar to me, as empathy maps are typically done at the start of all of my web and app development projects. When creating my own maps for this week though, what it was based upon was different than what I’m used to

Most of my empathy maps are based on user interviews, making them appear very direct. For this map though, I had to base it off an episode of undercover boss, making a map for the boss and an employee. I was actually a little surprised at how effective making a map like this is. In contrast to a normal map, there’s a lot more inference here. For example with one of my map focuses, Abdul, was simply just a very good worker. I went in assuming there would be excess drama due to it being a show, but Abdul was shown as a great worker. This meant I had to look beyond simply how he acted in the kitchen and try to gain a better understanding of his story and struggles through his personal conversation with the boss.

 Week 4: Comprehensive Persona’s

Continuing from last week, we created another artifact based around empathizing with the user. This week it was persona’s, a concept I’m also very familiar with. We didn’t just create normal persona’s though this time. Rather it was something entirely different dubbed “comprehensive persona’s”, which covers much more information than a typical one. To try out making one, we created two different comprehensive persona’s based upon our website analysis from week 2.

What I enjoyed the most about comprehensive persona’s is how direct they often were. Features like inhibiting factors and possible triggers I feel are great for getting a quick understanding of potential user’s. Rather than trying to infer something off a limited narrative, you’re instead directly told what the issues are and what initiates site usage.

Another interesting aspect of these persona’s is how they’re more connected than usual. While each user is different, some will be more connected to each other than others. If one person wants to read articles and another wants to post them, they both need a source to share these articles. With these persona’s, it takes combination’s like these and connects them all together, making it easier to see how unilaterally positive and/or negative a single change may be to a whole user base.

 Week 5: Problem Definition

Continuing on with the design thinking process, we’ve now moved to stage two, define. I actually found this to be one of my favorite weeks, as I enjoyed the research method used for this week, Point of View (POV) statements. I wasn’t familiar with POV statements at all before this, though they were pretty easy to pick up. They are similar to the feel and need statements done earlier, though far more direct. Rather than a broad, preliminary feeling on the app, you instead have an issue directly stated, with the reason why it’s an issue there as well.

For my own personal POV statements, I compared the three most prominent food delivery apps. As I couldn’t interview a good group of people, I instead had to utilize app store reviews. While many aren’t the most elegant, they did help me discover some common problems these apps face. I also found it interesting how certain aspects of an app can affect one individual far more than another. For some, if their order was messed up at all, they never wanted to use the app again. For others, they mention also having messed up orders, but still frequently use the app. While I ended up finding far more of the former, the latter presents a thought that maybe that issue isn’t as bad as it seems.

 Week 6: Ideation Methods

With the problems identified and defined, we now moved into the third phase of design thinking, ideation. Ideation is the part in design thinking where your creativity gets to run the most free. When ideating on potential solutions for a problem, there’s almost no wrong answer. As long as it relates to the subject in some way, it will provide use. This is because in reality ideas are not singular entities, but rather a bunch of different concepts and complaints forming into more pragmatic actions. Knowing that, every form of concept and complaint has some value.

To practice ideation, we tried out a wide array of different ideation methods. We then used these ideation methods to address our POV statements from last week. My main goal in this task was to use as many different ideation ideas as possible. I did end up having to reuse a couple, but by having the contrast of all this different methods, I feel it helped expand my creativity more. While I didn’t think of anything revolutionary, I have a full bulletin board of different ideas, which will make it easier to combine and apply them in the later phases of the process.

Week 7: Journey Maps

For our last task in the first half of the design thinking process, we had to create something called a journey map. As the name implies, this map simply documents the journey of a user through a product or service. What makes these stand out is that they’re taking very simple ideas and breaking them down to their simplest form. You don’t simply want coffee, then drink coffee. You have to deal with issues such as driving to the store, making your order, and waiting in line. By documenting these seemingly menial tasks, it makes it easier to identify a potential problem in the journey you wouldn’t have noticed otherwise.

For my own journey map, I choose the process of buying a video game, as that is something I’m familiar with. All in all, I ended up being surprised at how little room for problems there often is. The first thing I thought for this map were issues like the store being out of stock or stickers ruining the box, but aside from that the process is often very smooth. This does help show how even in seemingly simple tasks, the potential for issues is still there, so maps like these are very effective at wedding those issues out

Conclusion

Overall, I learned a lot more about design thinking over these past few weeks. Going more in-depth on assignments like persona’s and empathy maps, as well as trying new methods like feel and need and POV, gave me more insight than I thought it would. I also enjoyed the process the more it went on due to how they all connected together. Each week feels meaningful, with each step using the previous as a jumping point. Over the next few weeks, I hope I can expand my understanding of design thinking even further with the last two steps, prototyping and testing.