WEEK 7: Taking your audience seriously: Drawing on research

LECTURE
Myra Thiessen
Taking your audience seriously: Drawing on research to inform design and design process
 

The Research Process

A designer must know the audience. It is important for designers to understand the capabilities and desires of the audience/end users, in other words what they can use and what they want to use. This requires research into performance and preference.

Research is critical, evidence-based, scientific and balanced. While research includes gathering information and collecting data, this is not the definition of research. Research requires systematic approaches to data collection, analysis and interpretation in order to develop understanding and new knowledge. theories may be developed, hypotheses generated and later tested. Research can also include experimentation in terms of testing or creating.

This process must remain systematic, documented and reflective. Meaningful research in design starts with a research question, leading to a clear hypothesis. Many young researchers begin with too many or too complex/vague research questions. While this can appear interesting and promising at the start, it usually leads to confusion and a lot more work later.

Once the hypothesis is defined, there should be a clear plan to tackle it and collect appropriate, accurate and useable data. Use of the data should be carefully considered before it is collected, in order to ensure robust and reliable analysis which yields meaningful interpretation. ultimately, findings should be applicable to design practice, and generate new knowledge.

The research process, like the design process, can be iterative. That is, theories are developed, hypotheses constructed, tested through collection and analysis of data, hypotheses accepted or rejected and then theory adjusted before the process begins again. Observation, evidence and experience are critically important in empirical research.

In design research, Psychology has critical relevance, since we are interested in how people will think, feel, react and behave to stimuli that has been designed for them.

Qualitative research methods use surveys, interviews, workshops, focus groups and case studies to investigate attitudes, beliefs and motivations which are all subjectively measured.

Quantitative research methods use more controllable techniques to examine relationships between specific, objectively measured variables, which can be translated into numerical data for statistical analysis.

Designs must be attractive, physically and socially appropriate, useable and practical, respectful and credible in order to create meaningful engagement with their audience. This requires observation after the product is in use, as well as before it has been finalised for production.

REFERENCES

• Frascara, J. (1997). User-centred graphic design: mass communications and social change. London: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. 
• Oppenheimer, D., & Frank, M. (2008). A rose in any other font would not smell as sweet: effects of perceptual fluency on categorization. Cognition, 106, 1178–1194.  
• Schriver, K. (1997). Dynamics in document design: creating texts for readers. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.  
• Sless, D. (2008). Measuring information design. Information Design Journal, 16(3), 250–258. 
• Song, H. & Schwarz, N. (2010). If it’s easy to read, it’s easy to do, pretty, good, and true. The Psychologist, 23(2), 108–111. 
• Stiff, P. (1997). ‘A Footnote Kicks Him’: How Books Make Readers Work. Journal of Scholarly Publishing, 28(2), 65.  
• Siu, K. W. M. (2003). Users' creative responses and designers' roles. Design issues, 19(2), 64-73.