User Research Friday

I stated in an earlier post that I want to be a design researcher when I grow up.  Last Friday, I had the opportunity to meet a bunch of other people that already do just that ("User Research" is synonymous with "design research" except it tends to be more focused on computer interfaces).  Many, many companies were represented at User Research Friday, from Wells Fargo to HP to Adaptive Path.  I'd like to say a special thanks to Bolt|Peters for putting it on, to the Mighty for hosting, and to Aviva Rosenstein for letting me know about it.

The first talk, by Steve Portigal, was about the role of research in design, and if you can do one without the other and still have "good design".  This talk wound up going around in circles just a tad, but in the end it seemed like the best answer was that despite research often getting marginalized, it is moving to be a part of design (possibly in an iterative role), just as ID has moved to be a normal part of the process. What wasn't answered was what "design", "research" or "good" meant.

The next talk was by Indi Young, formerly of Adaptive Path, now author of a book on Mental Models.  The first half of her talk was interesting, as she talked about how to go about building a useful "mental model" (1. to get beyond demographics; 2. dig into stories to find out why; 3. establish enough empathy to be able to "play their role"; 4. map out where the company is supporting users and where not).  The rest of her talk was all "case studies" which really came off as a sales pitch for her consulting services - focusing on the usefulness of Mental Models in different situations.  She seems to see "mental models" as an advanced version of "user personas".  I think this is worth a whole post, should I get around to it - I've gotten mixed messages from people in the field as to whether user personas are a good or bad tool, and that if you're going to use them, you have to be careful.  Maybe I should read her book...

The third talk was my favorite, but then I'm biased because it was given by my good friend Aviva.  Aviva's talk was titled "UR: Doing it Wrong?" and asked the question, are user researchers doing "real" ethnography or is it "fake"? She touched on the history of Anthropology, how it relates to the hero's quest (leaving the comforts of home to be with "the other", etc.) and finished with the idea that it's more important to be doing good research than to be doing "real ethnography."  Aviva laid out a few criteria for "good research" (which should sound fairly familiar to anyone involved in research):

1. avoid biases (or at least try to identify yours as clearly as possible)
2. be reflexive, truthful
3. be ethical
4. collect data, check assumptions, triangulate, record observations
5. don't just report, look for patterns
6. deliver credible and valuable insights
7. generate new ideas
8. be creative and resourceful

She also mentioned that part of the job is educating the client (many clients have issues with results that don't just support what they wanted to hear), which I've heard before - it's nice to have corroborating information. More interesting was a comment (from an audience member?) that much of User Research tends to stem from cognitive science and therefore may focus a little too much on efficiency (time on task, etc) over meaning (which is what I'm really interested in).

Next up was Kris Mihalic from Yahoo!Mobile.  He talked, not surprisingly, about mobile research (which is apparently just research for mobile, rather than stationary devices).  It was short, and the only take away I have from that is the not-surprising idea that just about any normal user research method can be adapted for mobile research... really, did you expect anything else?

Last was an entertaining talk on "How to Lie with Design Research" by Dan Saffer of Kicker Studio (and author of a couple books) - a take off of "How to Lie with Statistics" that was basically a list of "things not to do".  Though entertaining, it wasn't terribly informative, if only because it was a list of negatives (a common mistake among parents: "don't play with your food", "don't run in the halls", etc. - it doesn't let the child know what to do, just one of a myriad number of things not to do... stupid grown ups).

After that, it was an hour of drinks and chatting, during which I met a few very nice folks who I should very quickly get in touch with, if only to establish further relations.