[Sigia-l] Making assumptions

[Jared Spool]

On Aug 2, 2009, at 4:13 AM, Ziya Oz wrote:

> This is the most egregious part of 'design research'.
> 95% of the time there is no 'control'.

Good thing design doesn't have a control either. Otherwise, what would  
you do? (When you make breakfast, do you compare each result against a  
'control' breakfast, to see if you got the meal you were expecting?)

I think you're missing the point of design research, or at least the  
user research component. (Not all design research is about users. Some  
is about process and some is about the medium or materials.)

The goal of most of it isn't to scientifically prove x is better than y.

The goal is to inform the designer with perspective and insights they  
wouldn't get without conducting the research.

If Jonathan wants to improve his design ability, I'd recommend that he  
learn to explicitly state his assumptions. (I find sitting with a  
small team and brainstorming everything, from "our users all read  
english" to "they understand what a proxy is", by walking through the  
current or proposed design and looking for inherent assumptions.)

Once stated, any variety of user research techniques can quickly tell  
if the assumptions were correct or false. He can score his ability to  
guess correctly and use the places where he didn't get it right to  
learn something about his users, the context of use, and the  
objectives of the design.

Another technique I particularly like is to do post-launch usability  
testing or field research. Here Jonathan can see, through the users'  
eyes, how the design is being employed, what users do & don't  
understand, and opportunities for improvements. By comparing the  
objectives of the design to the outcomes, Jonathan can see where he  
hit his marks and explore what he could change in his assumptions to  
improve future designs.

User research is about informing design. If your design is already  
informed, then you don't need as much than if it is lacking in  
information. The problem is that the latter condition is hard to  
detect without research.

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks  Twitter: @jmspool