UX Research and Customer-Centered Design
As part of content and product development and instructional design, the audience plays a key role. To create quality materials in an effective manner requires research and understanding of end users’ needs and behaviors.
My customer-centered research approach integrated into my product development process generally follows these steps:
▷ Start.
1. UNCOVER needs
2. KNOW my market
3. UNDERSTAND my audience
4. SKETCH ideas
5. TEST and REFINE solutions
6. COMMUNICATE and COLLABORATE throughout
▷ Iterate.
Examples included here are from class assignments and work projects.
1. Uncover needs.
The first step is to design an experiment to discover ideas for testing and pursuit.
Questions to guide me through this step:
▷ Why pursue a particular project?
▷ What is my research methodology?
▷ How can I get users to show rather than tell me what they want or need?
KAYAK study. An independent study conducted for a class assignment into how effective KAYAK carries out its tagline “Search One and Done (*it now has a new marketing campaign). Research methodology incorporated observations, interviews, and surveys. Read the complete test plan, and learn about the results.
Office phone booths study. An independent ethnographic study conducted for a class assignment. My office had these new telephone booths that were getting a lot of critiques, which made for a good topic of research.
2. Know my market.
The second step is to analyze data collected to make note of common needs or issues emerging.
Questions to guide me through this step:
▷ What patterns or trends emerge from my research?
▷ What are the issues that require solutions?
▷ What are the personas to design/build for?
Video streaming service study. Collaborative class project of personas created for a video streaming service after conducting in-person interviews and building an affinity diagram. View the complete set of personas.
Art Appreciation market development. In revising a new edition of an Art Appreciation offering (print + digital products), the team worked on addressing the following takeaways collected from focus groups, surveys, and conversations and feedback from users.
3. Understand my audience.
The third step is to set goals and priorities to address the needs that my market and company seek.
Questions to guide me through this step:
▷ How can I empathize with my customers or clients?
▷ How can I launch and achieve success for my company and customers?
Aunt Sarah’s website proposal. A class project about creating a website proposal for a client (in this case, the owner of a drop-in daycare). Keeping the client’s main needs first was very important in planning a site that serves their goals.
Office phone booths study. Based on the study conducted on my office’s new telephone booths, some major needs were uncovered that generated ideas for possible actions and next steps. Read about the observation results and recommendations.
4. Sketch ideas.
The next step is to recommend solutions based on audience needs (internal and external).
Questions to guide me through this step:
▷ What do I want to propose to my customers and for what purpose?
▷ What do I want to propose to team members (e.g., brand managers, project managers, marketing managers)?
Aunt Sarah’s website proposal. For the drop-in daycare website proposal, I outlined and sketched the following site map and prototype. View the complete proposal.
Peak Fitness site. A collaborative class project that prompted us to think about how sitemaps and wireframes for a fitness center’s website may differ to present optimal content when accessed via desktops vs. mobile devices. View the web wireframes and the mobile wireframes.
5. Test and refine solutions.
Then, it is time to incorporate feedback based on tests to refine solutions and/or build new ones.
Questions to guide me through this step:
▷ How can I measure customers’ happiness with a product or service?
▷ Have I met the company’s goals and metrics for success?
Museum app concept. A class assignment that challenged us to create an idea without text or numbers to see if reviewers can guess what the solution is and who the users are. Using feedback we received, we had to refine our concept.
Timeline design testing. For a U.S. History title, I collaborated with our Content Engineering team of content architects and instructional designers to draft an interview guide and set up 1-on-1 webinars with instructors to test some interactive timeline designs.
Art Appreciation market development. In revising a new edition of an Art Appreciation offering (print + digital products), the team created a marketing plan that tracked which instructors (and their students) we involved, how often, in what activities, when, and so on. We then continue to measure their satisfaction with our offerings in this course area as we look into platform enhancements and update with new features and content.
Beta test for Music Appreciation. Working with team members, I put together a script and video to be used for beta testing a new product in Music Appreciation. The video walks through what a courseware is, components of this new product, and other features such as flexibility and various course approaches.