Art of research
June 15 2013

Research Methods for Designing Effective Experience

In the article Research Methods for Designing Effective Experience, it explains three different kinds

of methods for the designers to understand the users better. The ways to help the designs not only

usable but also desirable, useful, needed, understandable and appropriate. The three methods are:

Taxonomies, Dreams and Games.

The first method Taxonomies is to analyze situation and opportunities systematically. By

deconstructing a situation into component parts and analyzing its aspects either one-by-one or in

combination. This can be helpful to think of a much more complete understanding of experiences and

the opportunities to design them. It's a great tool for developing new experience. The strongest

attribute with in Taxonomies are the ones that address persistent human values and emotions. It also

served as the basis of an interactivity chart to help differentiate appropriate uses of interactive media in

different situations. Taxonomies can be built for any situation. They're not particularly time

-consuming, but they must address attributes of a problem form many dimensions- especially those

represent human, social attributes rather than merely technology ones.

The second method Dream is a way of allowing audiences to indirectly disclose issues important to

them. The indirection is critical because when dealing with social and personal issues, too much

attention paid to the process, often lead to phony results. The classic story of research subjects

describing their behavior in ideal terms rather than actual ones in questionnaires regarding issues such

as television viewing is a case in point. Research subjects often give researchers exactly “what they're

asking for” if they sense judgmental reactions from the researchers or overlay their own judgments and

aspirations onto their own responses. Asking them indirect questions that focus on issues or situations

that are tangential to those being surveyed often exposes useful information that isn't contaminated by

second-guessing. Using subjects' dreams is one way of doing this. Instead of asking a person about

what their goals are, or ehat issues are most important to them, asking them to share their dreams, in

detail, often exposes these desires, needs and aspirations.

The third method is Games. Instead of asking formal, textual or test-like questions for audiences,

present the questions and interactions as games might be alternative. It can be physical game that is

kinesthetic, visual, aural or merely cognitive. Games have a way of making people feel more

comfortable and less judged. They can be used to initiate activities and prompt thinking and responses

through stimulation of the senses. Games can be solitary or involve interaction with others. The more

they prompt responses, the more data collected and the more there is to learn about people's reactions

and feelings. Games are sometimes judged too frivolous by researchers and designers, but research

subjects tend to have a higher tolerance for novel approaches.

It's important for us to take the time to develop our own methods and codify them into reproducible

process and artifacts. The time it takes to consider and document our research experiences and evolve

them continuously into our research can make the difference between success and failure on the

project. Well-documented methods improve consistency within organizations and greatly reduce

training time. Most