[Sigia-l] Sample question set for user research

[Ziya Oz]

karl v:
> "know your audience"

Ahh, there's a good place to start for me to agree and disagree with you.

It seems that you're assuming there's a (lowest) common denominator user
research template that can be applied to *any* context. I disagree, but
that's not a major point in this argument.

What's crucial is: would such a template actually help you in a specific
context? Or mislead or delay you in many ways?

It would be reasonable, for instance, to expect in such a template info on
age, income, ethnicity, education, even psychological indicators
(introvert/extrovert, impulse buyer/careful researcher), etc.

But if you are designing, say, a SAN product and you're really interested in
finding out if customers will grok the notion of virtualizing multiple
physical volumes into logical entities, I'd say most of that template would
be a waste of time -- yours and your customers. And the time you waste on
those template issues might be time you don't spend finding out about real
issues like, say, SarbOx compliance concerns over data preservation in
multiple formats or the fact that users of your product will most likely not
be the IT managers who will actually purchase it, etc.

At the end of the day, how innovative/differentiated/successful your product
will be is a direct function of what questions you ask. It's not
unreasonable to think that if you ask the same questions and explore the
same paths as everybody else (including your competitors), you'll likely
come up with a me-too product.

I'd thus consider the limited amount of time we get to spend with users
sacrosanct and not waste it with template questions. I'd focus on my issues
and my context, always waiting to unearth some insight missed by my
competitors, who were hopefully busy going through the template check list.
;-)

I know this makes it harder, but context is everything in design.

---- 
Ziya

Best Practices,
For when you've run out of your own ideas and context.