[Sigia-l] oursourcing research?

[Toms Stephens]

I'm looking at a proposal for an IA project which
entails a large chunk of identifying and profiling the
different types of users of the client's website. It
has been suggested here that much of that discovery
process could be delegated to a market research firm,
where they would handle all the rounding up of
participants, interviews, focus groups, and so on. Not
all the work could be handed over to them of course,
but maybe the demographics/ethnographic/affinity
portion could.

Is this a bad bad bad idea? Should we be trying to do
all this user research in house, so that we develop a
deep and intimate understanding of who we are
developing for?

Thoughts?

Regards,

Toms.

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