Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World

Where Organizations Go Wrong

Before we offer our suggestions for doing effective research that captures complexity and develops empathy, let's look at where organizations go wrong. Below are some common symptoms we've come to associate with organizations whose research efforts aren't as effective as they might be. See if you recognize any of these scenarios.

You might be doing research poorly if:

• You keep making the same mistakes with your customers.

• The functionality or usability of your product is excellent, but sales and usage are low.

• Your products are improved but seldom innovated.

• You have a shelf of reports, and no one knows what's in them.

• Your research team is busy and spending money, but your products don't seem to be getting any more successful.

• The marketing and positioning of products is great but ultimately fail to deliver.

Problems like these tend to result from one or two common faults. Some research fails because the methods aren't appropriate for addressing holistic experiences. Just as often, research fails due to organizational issues; perhaps others in the organization don't see its value or its relevance, or simply don't know how to use it.

Research in Isolation

In many organizations, research is conducted by a department or group that is removed from the rest of the design and development process, both physically and organizationally (Figure 4-1).

Figure 4-1. How research works in most organizations.

This means that most of the insights are trapped in the research group. If researchers are the only people talking to your customers, the rest of your organization has little opportunity to develop honest empathy. Many research teams receive a set of requirements, go do the research, and then pass the findings back over a figurative (or sometimes actual) wall, in the form of research reports and PowerPoint presentations. Designers, developers, and management read these once, and then file them away on a shelf or in a folder on their computer. This leads us to a second common mistake.

Reports, Where Good Insights Go to Die

Years of experience working on research-intensive design projects have taught the team at Adaptive Path that research reports are generally ineffectual, especially as the sole repository for research. There are lots of reasons why, but it's often simply because the report is so thick you could use it as a doorstop.

WILKENS' LAW: The effectiveness of a research report is inversely proportional to the thickness of its binding.

-Todd Wilkens

This is why organizations accrue shelves of reports that no one ever uses. Many researchers come from academic or business fields where research is a matter of proving or defending something; hence, the more evidence and detail, the better. But the end result of design research should be fundamentally different from academic research. Design research needs to inspire and indicate a clear direction. It needs to be engaging and powerful. And this isn't just about insights; research should promote empathy as well. Most reports and presentations aren't effective ways to help others develop empathy.

Market Research versus Design Research

Many organizations make another mistake in the way they approach marketing and design. In theory, market research is simply research focused on understanding a market or potential market. All organizations do it, and it makes a lot of sense that they would. But, as we discussed earlier, the field of marketing has mostly become the field of marketing messages. It's focused almost exclusively on discovering the stories and ideas that resonate with people. It sounds sophisticated and postmodern to say that companies are in the business of selling the idea of things rather than the things themselves, and it's true that even great products can fail without good marketing and advertising. At the end of the day, however, most organizations are making and selling real products and services.

Although we've spent a lot of time talking about intangibles such as meaning and emotion, your organization creates and provides tangible offerings. Your customers have a relationship to those products and services that is both tangible and intangible. Just as human factors, ergonomics, and other disciplines have focused too much on the tangible, marketing tends to focus too much on the intangible. There's clearly a message and story associated with your offering. But, as Marshall McLuhan reminded us, the medium (the experience, product, or service) is a fundamental part of the message. It's not just about telling a better or more persuasive story, but also about creating better products and services. Research for the design of products and services is a fundamentally different process than research for messages.

Of course, we don't mean to disparage marketing. On the contrary, we want to help organizations to take advantage of the strengths of traditional marketing research, but also to account for its limitations. Truly effective customer research takes both a traditional marketing approach and a design approach.