Should Product Designers be part of the Research Framework?
Product design should never be totally separated from the research phase. When this happens, there is a gap between what has been learnt and what is being designed.
Recently, in conversation with some product designers from various companies, I noticed that teams are becoming increasingly segregated. Between those who do research and those who just materialise the findings into something visual, ready to hand over to the developers.
This creates a separation and segregation in the process, where the depth of the insights is lost and consequently ends up affecting the quality of the deliverables for production.
Having worked with various companies and teams, I believe that product design should never be totally separated from the research phase. When this happens, there is a gap between what has been learnt and what is being designed.
Hours with users, an important metric
Hours with users is a metric that can define the design maturity of a company or designer, as well as the quality of what is produced.
Product designers who spend few hours with users are product designers who haven’t observed the behaviours or researched the attitudes they are designing for.
I think it’s clear what a negative impact this can have. Even if there are documents with findings or guidelines from the research team to follow a certain path, the person designing the interface or service needs to be able to experience these findings and investigate or observe them for themselves.
So how can we structure teams with both skills?
It always seemed right to me that there should be a team more dedicated to research and another that was more operational. However, I’ve never divided the methods that both teams use, but rather their purpose. In other words, both teams should use research and design validation methods, but for different purposes or at different times in the product.
In my case, when I form teams, the research team plays a more strategic role, where the focus is on exploratory research, using more formative research methods. It monitors the Key Experience Indicators and is concerned with informing the business of new opportunities such as changes to the current product that result in increases in value for the user and consequently ensure that the KEI’s are well maintained.
In addition, this team must support the operational side of the research and help the product designers produce their scripts, the materials needed for the study and supervise the use of good practices.
In the case of product design teams, they are responsible for the tatical side of research. Dealing on a daily basis with the materialisation of new interfaces or experiences, these teams must be focused on discovering the value for the user, finding the best way to deliver the proposed value and validating, through usability tests, what is produced.
This was the snack of the week. What’s your opinion on this topic?
See you soon!
