[Sigia-l] research: when is it enough?

[Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com]

PeterV's question was when do you know how much is enough.  It *should* 
have little to do with convincing managers, but in reality, it often 
does.  If managers are "systematically ingoring your counsel," yes you 
have a big credibility problem.  It is however, reasonable for someone 
to ask you to back-up your claim wiht facts and additional information. 
 Anyone who's working in a large enterprise on large projects, where 
politics are always at play, will experience this first hand.  To make 
a stronger point, if my suggested design direction outlines a solution 
that costs at a high price tag, then somebody damn well better ask me 
to back up my assertions.  And I'd better be able to do so.

To your point: the quality of the question matters a lot.  We usually 
only have time to seek answers to a few questions, so we have to pick 
the best ones.  Peter's question was specifically about USER research 
-- this is typically the type of research I find most valuable on 
projects.  Too often, when asked who their audience is, biz folks will 
say things like "car drivers in north america" -- and they don't know 
how to get more specific than that.  I find it incredibly valuable to 
do research around audience segments/user types to get a more thorough 
understanding of who the real target audiences are, their needs, etc.  
I don't do much research around interaction design techniques like nav 
placement, form usability, etc. -- I have guidelines and a lot of 
experience that I lean on heavility ro that.  If I run into a specific 
issue or question about an interaction technique, then I go looking for 
published research rather than conducting my own.  And if I really get 
stuck, I have CHI-Web and SIGIA-L to lean on.Usability testing?  Yeah I 
do that too, but it's more of an evaluation method than a research 
method in my book.  (Although conducting u-tests helps me build my 
design expertise as well.)

I have no idea what you mean by "you define the criteria for 
satisfaction".  If I have budget/time to do 10 interviews, or conduct 4 
days of field studies, or whatever, I often have to finish the research 
and then do some analysis of the results to figure out if we've gained 
enough insight to inform the engineering process.  If the findings lead 
to new, critical questions that need to be answered, then we might 
conduct more research.  As usual, the answer is "it depends" (I think 
someone already said that).

Answering low-level design questions like link color, font, nav 
placement, etc. isn't "user research", and is less necessary than user 
research on most projects.

I shouldn't have to do research to back up my claim that this 
widget/layout is the way to go.  I may have to use research to change a 
manager's opinion, showing that Feature A is more important to the user 
in this release as opposed to Nice-to-have Feature Z which the manager 
things is "cool".  If you get the big picture wrong, the low-level 
stuff doesn't matter anyway.

I'm rarely "satisfied", and the search is never over -- it just pauses 
until the next iteration.  :)

Regards,

Lyle Kantrovich
User Experience Architect
Cargill
http://www.cargill.com/

Personal Web Log:
http://crocolyle.blogspot.com/
Commentary on usability, information architecture and web design.


-----Original Message-----
From: ZiyaOz at earthlink.net [mailto:ZiyaOz at earthlink.net]
Sent: Tuesday, May 07, 2002 1:28 AM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] research: when is it enough?


"Lyle_Kantrovich at cargill.com" wrote:

> ... your opinion is valued above all others including seasoned 
business
> leaders with a track record of making businesses profitable (and who 
get paid
> 5 times what you do).

Somebody "with a track record of making businesses profitable (and who 
get
paid 5 times what I do)" would not be idiotic enough to hire me to give 
him
advice and then systematically ignore my counsel. Let me repeat that:
successful managers do not hire people whose professional opinion they
neither trust nor listen to. It'd be a waste of both their time and 
money.
If you find yourself constantly trying to justify what you propose to 
your
management by citing 'research' and what *others* say or have done, I
suggest you rethink your place and future in that organization: you're 
more
than expendable.

> Some of the greatest minds in history spent a lot of time doing 
research and
> learning from the research of others.

You can appreciate the difference between self-improvement and the 
*need* to
constantly cite 'research' to convince your management, can't you?

Now, if name calling makes you feel better about your own predicament, 
by
all means, go ahead. I'm an altruistic person, with a thick skin. But 
if you
want to directly address what I said:

>> So, it seems to me, the answer depends on the quality of the 
question and the
>> resources with which you can go after it. That is, you define the 
criteria
>> for satisfaction. When you're satisfied, the search is over.

be my guest.

Best,

Ziya

Content Management Symposium, Chicago O'Hare Marriott, June 28 - 30.
See http://www.asis.org/CM
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