Raitis Linde

Bringing user studies in form of a game

Wohoooo! First exam successfully finished, a lot of preparation, hours of user study evangelism and a lot of insights into importance of user studies into design and innovation. I understand more and more that role of designer is becoming more than just creating a beautiful wrap. It is also something about discovering a user need, smartly involving them in creation process and giving a soul to the concept that could be fulfilled.

I would like to share my ideas of how I imagine user studies brought into the team that is not familiar with such. Most of the insights came from our Participatory innovation project with Dimaps, but is not limited to it.

I have used this synopsis in exam presentation, and of course – this is not a complete scientific paper, just a guide for myself. The basic idea is to make studying users as a game (3rd poster) and building knowledge about them from the methods applied that would be made in attractive form.

In quick glance – it is important to challenge teams’ assumptions about users that at least I have met quite often. In my opinion these assumptions lower the motivation of conducting user studies. Of course, there always can be good guesses, but studying users I think is actually a safer way of making innovation that would be accepted on the market.

More about challenging these assumptions in a synopsis. That’s at least from my own experience

Scene from a Robin Hood movie project

I had pretty much experience on teamwork while studying and working. And the practical side is much more dirty than just reading books. Understanding teamwork begins from a feeling the power of community, frustration on making decisions, having a laugh together while working, blaming each other for failures and leaving behind own ego to move forward.

Innovation – a fight between different personalities

So a teamwork is a mixure of the pleasant and the unpleasant. This system is unpredictable to some extent just like everything related to people. Some of them wants to lead, some of them doesn’t want to be lead, others have communication issues. Well, and very often – most of the team members have different characters. This is especially the case related to innovations, because innovation is most likely to happen in the mixture of different personalities and experiences. That means – a lot of arguing, crying, fighting, dealing with uncertainity, returning back, creating & trying & destroying ideas. And to actually move somewhere with ideas, everyone should be intelligent enough to understand that there are different personalities sitting around, and that disagreements shouldn’t be taken personality. Of course, there is a need also for a good leader, who can observe what is happening and put everybody on the right track again, if something goes wrong (some people are about to harm each other physically etc. ). Influence of a leader should be delicate – to much authority and creativity is limited, too much freedom and creativity flies around without a common goal. However, it is always a good idea to introduce each other in the beginning, so everybody is aware of other team member’s skills, talents, experience, personality and expecations.

But one is clear in the innovation process, team members shouldn’t afraid of constructive conflicts. These are actually quite natural (and useful) parts in giving a birth to new ideas and perspectives, in spite of that it might be exhausting to get a common sense. To get somewhere with these flying ideas, everybody should have a common understanding of what they want to achieve – do they want solve a problem, decide on concepts (of products), have a kick-start in a project … ?

Having a chance to go this stage over and over again in many projects, I learned that it is critical to learn explaining and presenting your ideas as good as possible. That could include not just story, but also quick sketches, models, mock-ups. It is important to be aware of how you are explaining your ideas, if nobody will understand the point of it, somebody else (who will present more clearly) will bring through his/her ideas.

Time to start working

Burning the brains to get innovation out

Well, after ideas have been thrown on table and common consensus has been found, it is time for actually trying out ideas. That includes building mock-ups to test on users, bulding prototypes, conducting surveys and observing users. If in the first phase there was relatively plenty of freedom and everybody were the same, then now it is a time for actually having different roles (some are good writers, some are great at listening, someone at building electronics) and responsibilities. From my experience, when there is a lack on agreement of who is doing what, then plenty of work overlays. A frustration comes out because usually the work of just one person is being chosen in such cases. And what is important, every member on team wants to feel that he/she has contributed in the success of a team.

Some personalities appear in this stage as well. There are people who prefer to work alone, and there are people who prefer to talk with other people, discuss problems etc. And of course, we can’t forget people who like to supervise everything – to worry about whole project and be sure, that everyone is doing right things.

Testing Business Models and our findings

In this course we wanted to discover how can one integrate business thinking in a user-driven innovation process?

We were introduced with local company, who has made innovative daylight solution.  We ITPD students were merged with students from Innovation & Business studies. Our main task was to determine the market (Schools, Hotels, Hospitals etc.) where company should expect the largest ROI.

Project was organized in matrix type, so each of us were in both functional and project teams. I was in User Research and in the same time OEM teams. In UR team I was able to discuss and share methods for researching users. In OEM team I was able to discuss which companies to visit, what kind of information to get, which was expected to result in tangible business model which should provoke discussions between all stakeholders.

User Research Methods

In the beginning of the project the excitement was so high that I was willing to test all (known to me) UR methods.

Research tools [Elements of UX, p.51]:

• surveys
• interviews
• focus groups
• user tests
• field studies

Video tools

• usability testing
• scenario design
• ethnographic field studies

However, due to a lack of time and short meeting sessions between team members (we and I&B students had different time schedules) we spent most of the energy getting to consensus and deciding how a work should be done. This resulted in some overlays of our work. That should be kept in mind for the next projects, that clear, agreed roles and a strategy in the beginning is important

Tangible Business Model

And one more thing that I would do next time after we have consensus – making more research on company’s solution, so there would not be a need to ask simple questions for company about them in the middle of project.

So in the end we ended up with some interviews, daylight solution research and business model testing in the end. Some teams used Personas and Scenarious to present their ideas and users.

Our business model had a matrix structure as well and it showed how effective going into a specific market (Architects, Offices, Wellness centers etc.) would be if parameters of Customization, Visual Perception, Cost etc. would be changed.

You can get insight of our project in my Flickr “Business of Design” set. Or our course’s Flickr set.