User Research Smoke and Mirror

Research based design

As can be seen from the discussion of the author, I too agree that research design is a very important process when it comes to designing a successful product. It is somehow akin to marketing when we talk about research here because it works on the same theory. Without research on what people like and what people want in a product, a designer would not be able to foresee/predict what attributes their design should have. And especially after taking this module, it could not be more oblivious to me that designers' cannot trust their own personal taste/judgement when it comes to designing a product since they are not the users. Thus profit seeking companies come into the picture to neutralize the equation by demanding research to be done and statistics is the new evidence to approve of a certain design.

The author also talks about how scientific analysis have deeply affected the job of designers to design. It specifically discusses about the issue of eyetracking. The author thinks that eye-tracking is a inefficient tool if designers are going to use that as a gauge as to what is wrong with a particular website and its elements. It normally leads the project astray and leads the designer to a wrong conclusion which will lead to disastrous result. However, the author recommends that eyetracking be used as a political tool to aid the designer in convincing the boss in supporting their decisions.

At the end of the day, he supports research but not scientific ones. He prefers the down-to-earth methods of research; the ones like focus groups which talks to the users and not approaching the product from a scientific perspective. I actually agree with his viewpoint because it all ties down to what I have been learning in this module! Users are the most important factor to consider when it comes to knowing what is needed. Science and technology are only an intermediary to help us understand them better but when they are used as the main thing to judge a product, there must be something inherently wrong with this approach! Therefore I have to say that i totally agree with his viewpoint. I would prefer the traditional approach of approaching the people instead of machines and technology as my point of judgement.