Research The Researcher S01C03 feat Akshay Verma
Name and a brief intro about yourself…
Akshay Verma. I’m a product designer with a background in interaction designer and film.
Current place of work
Uncommon/Obvious
Designation/role/title
Product Designer
What you up to? (any interesting work or project you want to talk about)
I’m currently working on Simple (www.simple.org), which is a hypertension management system being built by Resolve to Save Lives in collaboration with Government of India. It aims to save 100 million lives from cardiovascular disease.
How and Why did you get into User Research?
I was introduced to user research during my first year at NID as part of the course, Design Concepts and Concerns lovingly called DCC.
The first user study that I ever did was with pani-puri vendors in old Ahmedabad, as part of a DCC assignment. Talking to and learning about their lives was enlightening and I was amazed to realize how people whose lives were very different from my own had a perspective that I had never imagined, but yet there was some much that I could relate to — that human connection. Back then, user research seemed like documentary filmmaking to me and I even ended up making a short documentary on those pani-puri vendors.
Later, during my study at CIID, I learned more formal and much more powerful ways of conducting and synthesizing user research, techniques that I find myself using every day at Uncommon.
One book recommendation for those who want to get started in User Research (can also be a book which you often refer to)
I would highly recommend part 1 of Alan Cooper’s book, About Face, to anyone looking to get a broad understanding of the basic research practices that should be part of their toolbox.
I have also found it immensely helpful to form an understanding of how we arrived at the current forms of design practice from an evolutionary point of view, by tracing the history of design, technology, and industry. IDEO cofounder, Bill Moggridge’s book, Designing Interactions, is a great book in that regard.
What skills do you look for when hiring Researchers? (or what skills you think Researchers should have)
1. Interpersonal skills: A good researcher should be able to form instant connections with their interviewees. Like a good host, they should be able to strike a balance between friendliness and command over the room, so that people open up to them but they still steer the discussion.
2. Synthesis: A good researcher should not only be able to do an unbiased synthesis of their findings but should also be able to dig deep and find nuggets of insights that are not apparent to the untrained eye.
3. Storytelling: A good researcher should be able to present their work in a way that it transports the rest of team into the life of the user, prioritizes the problems to be solved, and convinces people why they are worth solving.
What value does User Research add to Product Design & Development? (if any examples where User Research created an impact, that would be great)
I can’t imagine doing product design in any other way.
Good design is human-centric, and I’m often baffled by how many designers skip the user research phase and just push pixels to make pretty looking things when learning about the users they are designing for is the most obvious thing to do.
If the design were a religion, this would be its greatest sacrilege.
For the current project that I’m working on, Simple, research has been the very basis of our work. We have conducted around ten user studies in the past nine months. The project started with us building a high fidelity, fully interactive prototype containing just the fundamental functions of the app, and then testing it and iterating on it repeatedly through user studies in the villages of Punjab. We now also do telephonic research to continuously capture feedback from the field and keep ourselves involved in some of the support work too.
From our usability testing and observational research, we have been able to:
1. Validate or disprove our concepts before we develop them.
2. Map user journeys, values, behavior, needs, and opportunities through artifacts that create a shared understanding and a common vocabulary for our users’ otherwise fuzzy contexts.
3. Identify design opportunities and gaps in our understanding of the user.
In the near future, we will also be measuring the quantitative impact that our solutions have had.
How is User Research structured at your place of work? (is it that researchers are embedded into products or called for as and when the demand arises)
Until recently, everyone on our team had been doing user research independently for their own projects. But, we now have a full-time UX researcher on our team who will be working across projects.
How do you grow as a Researcher? (what should Researchers do to stay valuable)
1. Let go of your insecurities and understand the essential mindset that each phase of the design process requires. During my student years, I used to often cripple my own abilities by prioritizing the wrong thing, like spending too much making a research diagram look pretty when I should have been focusing on sense-making and iterating rapidly using the leanest ways possible. It takes a good deal of faith and practice to be able to mentally say no to every ambition or fear that is misplaced or mistimed.
2. Focus on clarity-making. As a researcher, your job is to turn the vague assumptions, findings, and hypotheses that float around in the team, into distilled insights and models that can constantly guide design decisions.
3. Learn to tell compelling stories to convince stakeholders, and to create a shared understanding and a sense of purpose for your team.
What are the sources of info which you follow to stay updated in the field of User Research (can be people you follow on Medium/LinkedIn/Twitter, Websites, Publications, etc)
My go-to source of user research information and practices is Nielsen Norman Group’s articles and newsletters.
Erika Hall also writes great articles on Mule Design’s blog, in addition to the wonderful books she has written.
