Guerilla Design Research

joycechou2010

You’re a DESIGNER.

So, why do you need research and strategy?

Research and strategy in design are ways to give yourself a reality check.

Design research is used to encourage disruptive innovation before you create new products.

Why don’t we just start coming up with cool ideas?

Cool ideas often tank, or don’t even get to the market.

viability

feasibility

desirability YES

YES

YES

the creation center

T-Mobile: Creation Center

1. Get out of your rabbit hole.

Understand the world through your customer’s eyes.

courtesy of xkcd.com

the creation center

T-Mobile: Creation Center

2. Mediate a group opinion.

Open communication within a team is essential.

courtesy of xkcd.com

the creation center

T-Mobile: Creation Center

3. Connect with an emotional story.

There is no formula for human behavior.

courtesy of xkcd.com

OK, you’re bought in.

How do you actually do this?

Gather data.

T-Mobile: Creation Center

Go to where people spend their everyday life and look for the needs they don’t even know they have.

You are looking for:

• Workaround or DIY solutions to small annoyances.

• Behavior that surprises your assumptions.

• Differences between what people say and what they do.

• The way people define their values and priorities.

Immerse yourself in their world

Perspective Interview to get a sense of their everyday routine and hear stories that are meaningful to them.

Experience Shadow their normal life to understand their challenges and how they work around them.

Objects Hold a show and tell of the things they use everyday to get a sense of what they consider important.

• Card sorts

• Diaries

• Mind maps

• Fly on the wall

• Mystery shopper

• Analogous experiences

• Photo journals

• Contextual inquiry

• Expert interviews

• Questionnaires

• Surveys

• Extreme users

• Cognitive walkthrough

• Secondary research

• Co-design workshops

• Focus groups

• Trend analysis

• Competitive analysis

research toolbox

goodies

Contextual Inquiry Behavior, value systems, unmet needs, workaround solutions

Interviewing people in their home to understand everyday lives.

Analogous Experiences Group dynamics, relationships, navigation

Observing interaction and context at comparative research sites.

Extreme Users Motivators, ecosystem drivers, redefining a problem

Shadowing edge cases to articulate essential human needs.

Next, make data meaningful.

Translate observations into ways that can guide new product development.

Identify unmet needs:

• Get concrete to communicate across practice areas.

• Organize for patterns to visualize the data and get a sense of scale.

• Make leaps to interpret, and then keep on iterating for meaning.

Recognizing needs as a team

Define Each team member brings a unique perspective and associate meaning in different ways.

Explore Surprising findings emerge when the team allows connections to form organically in a bottoms-up way.

Empathize To create a compelling story, the team must make a personal connection with the user experience.

synthesis toolbox

• Visualizing

• Analyzing

• Organizing

• Experience map

• Filtering

• Interpreting

• Framework

• Personas

• Clusters

• Venn Diagram

• Typologies

• 2x2’s

• Journeys

•Tensions

• Infographics

Cluster Themes, pain points, need tensions

Filtering pieces of data to see emergent themes.

goodies

Framework Roadmap planning, diagrams, and infographics

Organizing the motivators and trade-off decisions of your users.

Experience map Customer journeys, key decision points, scenario plans

Plotting out needs, actions or motivations of the user over time

Typologies Strategic landscape, User priorities

Breaking out the key user values with different definitions.

Now let’s get GUERILLA.

You don’t need a corporate expense account or a team of experts. Use what you have and observe the world around you.

Say you have a project on a mobile social networking app...

1. Your marketing stakeholder wants to target young adults (18-34)

2. Your business strategy stakeholder wants to ensure that it is easy enough to learn for a mass market.

Understand your parameters:

We don’t need another Facebook, but then what do we need?

Get to the heart of the matter

1. Ask yourself, what is this really about?

• Community • Hangout spot

2. Is there something that people do already?

• Parking lot at Dunkin’ Donuts (hmm… no, you need to also think about your client)

• Skate Park

Finding an analogous experience.

Look for:

• Roles

• Relationships

• Crowded/ empty spaces

• Badges of affiliation

• Hierarchies of status

• Unique language

Open your eyes, and go out the door:

Certain areas are

respected as non-social

The most tricks happen in

front of the lunch tables

The environment shows you how people behave as a whole .

Start out by looking at the big picture

Performance and mentorship come up over and over again.

You start to notice a pattern

Advanced skaters teach

and mentor in a

spontaneous way

Skaters spend as

much time watching

others skate

The best skaters have

the same helmet sticker Casual socializing begins

with asking for tips

Now make it actionable Your users : • Socialize through teaching

• Rely on a mix of different skill levels

• Hone their skills alone until they can perform

So, they need: • Clear marks of “teacher” expertise for learners

• Designated areas to switch into observation mode

• Practice spaces set apart from social areas

Practicing space

Teaching space

Performance Audience

SOCIAL

NON- SOCIAL

HIGH OPPORTUNITY

thank you!

contact me at joyce.hoice@gmail.com