Erika Hall

Research is not asking people what they like

“Like” is not a part of the critical thinker’s vocabulary.

On some level, we all want the things we do to be liked (particularly on Facebook), so it’s easy to treat likability as a leading success indicator. But the concept of “liking” is as subjective as it is empty.

You’ll need to explain to them why interviews with method and purpose are more valuable than having a social conversation with a random person—and why it really doesn’t matter where you do them, as long as they’re done right.

Research is just another name for critical thinking

Ideally, everyone who is on the design team should also participate in the research

based on the research you’ve all done together, you’ll be able to spend less time explaining the rationale and more time focused on the merit of the conclusion. “As you saw in the interviews, we found that our target group of amateur astronomers exclus

doing research together actually did make our team more collaborative

If the client has only identified an audience and wants to explore ways to better serve them (“What can we offer of value to high school science teachers?”), our research will be more open-ended than if the design problem is already well defined (“How can we get high school science teachers to download and use our lesson plans?”).

Generative or exploratory research: “What’s up with...?”
This is the research you do before you even know