{"id":1709,"date":"2013-04-03T11:47:05","date_gmt":"2013-04-03T15:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thinking.is\/?p=1709"},"modified":"2024-07-11T10:59:31","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T14:59:31","slug":"grounds-of-mystery-a-design-research-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.daed.com\/?p=1709","title":{"rendered":"Grounds of Mystery: A Design Research Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every office has them \u2014 the people who can\u2019t function without a morning cup o\u2019 joe \u2014 and Daedalus is no exception. Recently, this crucial morning ritual mysteriously turned bitter (literally), threatening the cognitive functioning of many Daedites. Being an office of researchers and engineers, we did what we always do \u2026 investigate!<\/span><\/p>\n

We quickly realized that this little problem exemplified common tendencies we see when conducting design research and showcased the reasons why design research is important.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, we found that many of our coffee drinkers hadn\u2019t really liked the coffee even before it turned bitter! It wasn\u2019t great, it wasn\u2019t bad, just kind of mediocre. But no one had complained and making the coffee better hadn\u2019t really crossed anyone\u2019s mind. Our coffee drinkers simply brewed the same thing every day, not questioning the routine.<\/span><\/p>\n

This illustrates why waiting for customers to tell you their opinion about a product or experience won\u2019t work. Repetition of the same task desensitizes us to improvement opportunities, and customer voices are often only heard in extreme cases \u2014 when something is profoundly amazing or painstakingly atrocious. But it’s the mediocre aspects of a product \u2014 the ones users \u201cmake do\u201d with \u2014 that can make the difference between a great product and a good product. And until you engage your user through observations and interviews, those mediocre aspects will stay hidden, simply because customers often don\u2019t question the routine.<\/span><\/p>\n

But it does turn out that some of our coffee drinkers were already solving the problem in their own ways. One was creating his own concoction, \u201cI’m \u2026 buying 2 espresso shots from Einstein’s and adding that to a 1\/2 cup of the office coffee\u2026.\u201d Others were buying coffee elsewhere or adding flavors to mask the taste, \u201cI’ll add more chocolate creamer and sweetener if necessary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This illustrates yet another example of the importance of design research and an issue we commonly see – the user has already fixed the problem, so the corporation never knows that the problem exists. You won\u2019t see the workaround if you don\u2019t directly engage the user. In surveys, the user probably won\u2019t mention it as a problem because they no longer view it as a problem.<\/span><\/p>\n

We saw other issues that we often encounter during design research. One coffee drinker responded in-depth to an email that was sent asking about the coffee dilemma without answering the questions posed. Another sidestepped the questions and immediately provided a possible solution. Someone else publicly voiced their opinion over \u201creply all,\u201d inadvertently influencing responses from other coffee drinkers. Another insisted she didn\u2019t care and would drink whatever was there \u2014 though later admitted to having a preference \u2014 she just wasn\u2019t motivated enough to share it.<\/span><\/p>\n

In the end, we solved our problem and the journey was enlightening. The answers you\u2019re looking for aren\u2019t instant \u2014 and design research is the perfect percolator.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every office has them \u2014 the people who can\u2019t function without a morning cup o\u2019 joe \u2014 and Daedalus is no exception. 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