Design Research

Design research takes place as you design. Within the product development lifecycle, design research takes place during the design phase (phase three) to inform your designs, meet user needs, and reduce risk. Each time you create a new version of your design, new research should be conducted to evaluate what works well and what needs to be changed.

In design research, your goal is to answer the question: How should we build it?

The amount of design research you do depends on where you are working and what you are building. The most common method for conducting design research is a usability study, a technique for evaluating a product by testing it on users.

The goal of usability studies is to identify pain points that users experience with your prototypes so that the problems can be fixed before the product hits the market. In the next course of this certificate program, you will conduct your own usability study.

Other Research Methods

Other research methods that can be used to conduct design research include:

A/B Testing. A research method that evaluates and compares two different aspects of a product to see which one is most effective. For example, you could have users evaluate two layouts for your app's homepage to find out which layout is more effective.

Cafe or guerrilla studies A research method that gathers user feedback by taking a design or prototype out into the public and asking passersby for their opinions. For example, you could sit down in a local cafe and ask customers if they would be willing to test your app design for a few minutes and provide feedback.

Card sorting A research method where study participants are instructed to sort individual labels written on slips of paper into categories that make sense to them. This type of research is primarily used to figure out the information architecture of your project.

Intercept A research method that gathers on-the-spot feedback from users as they engage in the activities being studied. Intercept studies are often conducted in the field, so this type of research is often considered a subset of field research. An intercept study can provide rapid, high-level feedback.