Usually when you design and conduct a user research study, you’re focused on keeping the methods sound, recruiting good users, and asking the right questions, which is already a tall order. Unfortunately, no matter how well you conduct your studies, your methods have little to do with how the research ultimately gets used in the design and development phases. Everyone’s a little bit to blame for this: design researchers can do evil by conducting useless research and presenting it ineffectively; clients can do evil by misconstruing findings, or by undervaluing research to begin with.
This talk will cover the ways that research can be misconducted, misinterpreted, and misunderstood, and on the other hand, how you can involve your clients in your research, to show them how and why it’s done, and get inspired to think about design problems through the eyes of real users. A rough slide outline for the discussion can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/boltpeters/when-design-research-is-evil
(This was a panel at IxDA San Francisco in April 2009. It was a fun, raucous group discussion so we thought it would be fun to do in Savannah. Hopefully this doesn’t disqualify us. Here’s a link of the panel we did in SF: http://ixdasf.ning.com/events/when-ux-research-is-evil )
Biography
Nate Bolt
After pioneering and directing the User Experience department at Clear Ink in 1999, Nate Bolt co-founded Bolt | Peters. He now serves as the CEO, where he has overseen hundreds of user research studies for Sony, Oracle, HP, Greenpeace, Electronic Arts, and others. Beginning in 2003, he led the creation of the first moderated remote user research software, Ethnio, which is being used around the world to recruit hundreds of thousands of live participants for research. Nate regularly gives presentations on native environment research methods in both commercial and academic settings, and is currently co-authoring Remote Research, a book on remote testing, published by Rosenfeld Media.
Mark Trammell
Mark Trammell is the User Experience Architect at Digg in San Francisco. His work on the Web spans more than a decade and includes co-authoring two books on Web standards and tenures with the United States Navy, the University of Florida, the Web Standards Project Educational Task Force, and PayPal. While leading a standards-based rebuild of the University of Florida Web presence, he started an extensive user research program including tests throughout Florida and taught user-centered design in UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. Trammell now leads user research at Digg. Trammell enjoys live music, photography, and burritos.
Discussions
When Design Research is Evil
Session Title
When Design Research is Evil
Presenter
Nate Bolt, Bolt | Peters User Experience
Session Type: Discussion
Usually when you design and conduct a user research study, you’re focused on keeping the methods sound, recruiting good users, and asking the right questions, which is already a tall order. Unfortunately, no matter how well you conduct your studies, your methods have little to do with how the research ultimately gets used in the design and development phases. Everyone’s a little bit to blame for this: design researchers can do evil by conducting useless research and presenting it ineffectively; clients can do evil by misconstruing findings, or by undervaluing research to begin with.
This talk will cover the ways that research can be misconducted, misinterpreted, and misunderstood, and on the other hand, how you can involve your clients in your research, to show them how and why it’s done, and get inspired to think about design problems through the eyes of real users. A rough slide outline for the discussion can be found here: http://www.slideshare.net/boltpeters/when-design-research-is-evil
(This was a panel at IxDA San Francisco in April 2009. It was a fun, raucous group discussion so we thought it would be fun to do in Savannah. Hopefully this doesn’t disqualify us. Here’s a link of the panel we did in SF: http://ixdasf.ning.com/events/when-ux-research-is-evil )
Biography
Nate Bolt
After pioneering and directing the User Experience department at Clear Ink in 1999, Nate Bolt co-founded Bolt | Peters. He now serves as the CEO, where he has overseen hundreds of user research studies for Sony, Oracle, HP, Greenpeace, Electronic Arts, and others. Beginning in 2003, he led the creation of the first moderated remote user research software, Ethnio, which is being used around the world to recruit hundreds of thousands of live participants for research. Nate regularly gives presentations on native environment research methods in both commercial and academic settings, and is currently co-authoring Remote Research, a book on remote testing, published by Rosenfeld Media.
Mark Trammell
Mark Trammell is the User Experience Architect at Digg in San Francisco. His work on the Web spans more than a decade and includes co-authoring two books on Web standards and tenures with the United States Navy, the University of Florida, the Web Standards Project Educational Task Force, and PayPal. While leading a standards-based rebuild of the University of Florida Web presence, he started an extensive user research program including tests throughout Florida and taught user-centered design in UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. Trammell now leads user research at Digg. Trammell enjoys live music, photography, and burritos.