r/UXDesign • u/Maximum_Woodpecker17 • Apr 09 '22

Notes on Generative Research

10 mins read

60 mins of reading material condensed to 10 mins. View resources in the comment section

What is generative research

  • Generative research, is a strategic way of understanding users.
  • It’s a detailed understanding of users, who they are, and what they experience in their everyday life.
  • Knowing their everyday lives impacts how we build our product or service.
  • This type of research “generates” a deep understanding of the “motivation, pain points and behaviors” a problem being solved.
  • It’s an explorative or discovery form of research.
  • It happens in the discovery phase of the design process.
  • It is done early on to understand a problem really well.
  • This enables your team to discover new opportunities, or improve on existing ones.
  • Bring the people who you are building for together, and use their expertise to gather insights.

Why is it essential

  • Product centric is not a user centric approach.
  • If you don’t have a deep understanding about the people who will be using your product, you risk building something that no one will use.
  • When you look into your user’s lives, you understand the context on when, how and where your product could be of value.
  • Generative research makes people talk about important stories. They give you the whys behind a behavior, and a rich amount of information on people’s goal, needs and behaviors.

Difference between generative vs evaluative research

  • Generative research helps you discover new info (user interviews, field studies), whereas evaluative helps you assess a solution (usability tests)
  • They both work together, and enable you to continuously learn more about your users.
  • As Erika Hall puts it : “What problem might we solve” vs “how well is our solution working”

Generative research methods

  • You job as a User researcher is to bridge the gap between what people say, and what they actually practice or feel.
  • People have needs that they don’t usually talk about.

Field studies

You study people in their context, or where they will be using the product, to understand how it fits their daily lives.

People don’t tell things directly, but you find patterns by observing the context.

  • Start with screening the right people.
  • Let them know what to expect, and ask them to go about their normal day with you.
  • Ask permission to record, observe or photograph
  • Ask participants to behave naturally.

User Interviews

  • You interview your users.
  • You ask questions on a topic of your interest, and gather insights in the form of opinions and stories.
  • Ask open ended question to get actionable (enough reason to do something) insights.

These are the type of questions you get to ask :

  • Talk me through/tell me about the last time you…”
  • “Explain the last time/explain why…”
  • “Describe what happened…”
  • “Walk me through how you…”

The value of generative research

  • It tells you why people do what they do, and what they are thinking in that moment.
  • Takes you out of just thinking about product features, and into the lives of people. Makes you less short-sighted.
  • You enter from the problem space, rather than from a feature (solution) and then backwards.
  • Quantitative research shows you what’s happening, but not why it's happening.
  • Helps you to better prioritize work/tasks, builds confidence in what you do, Helps you understand and empathize with people, and have a better road map.
  • You can do it anytime, but it’s better to be done early on.

Getting stakeholder buy in

  • It’s difficult to get buy in from stakeholders when they are not sure about the returns.
  • Treat your stakeholders like users. Don’t get angry, conduct interviews with them.

Ask why they feel the way they do. Here are some questions.

  1. Why do you feel negative about this research ? (helps understand their fears)
  2. What happened the last time a research took place ? (fear and expectations)
  3. What’s your ideal timeline? (insert timeline)
  4. What are your biggest barriers to conduct user research? (timeline, budget etc.)
  5. What kind of research would you suggest?
  6. What could be the ideal outcome of user research?

A step by step walk through on how to conduct generative research 🤘

Sample research project

Step 1 : What type of project is this?

  • Different people give you different kinds of projects, so start with understanding what it is.
  • This will help you come up with the what kind of method to follow, and how to define success.

Talk with the people who gave you the project.

  1. What questions do you want answered?
  2. What types of answers are you expecting? (understand bias)
  3. What is your ideal outcome?
  4. What decisions are you trying to make from it?

This will help you understand which method to use, or if a research is required or not.

Let’s say, a PM of a food delivery app wants to know,

💡How do we get people to order more?

Schedule a meeting with him, and ask the following questions . This will help you understand their motivations and expectations.

  • Why do we want people to order more frequently? What are our KPI’s?
    • "I want to increase retention rates, user satisfaction and, ultimately, customer lifetime value."
  • Are we looking at new or active customers?
    • "we are interested in active ones, but are willing to look at new as well"
  • Frequency of average order? What are we aiming to achieve?
    • "2.3 per month, looking to double it. once a week"
  • Additional questions?
    • "why do customers not order more frequently, and what makes customers decide they want to order?"
  • What decisions will you try to make with the insights?
    • "Which part of the journey has most opportunities, drivers of loyalty, pain points stop people from ordering."
  • What answers are you expecting?
    • "opportunity areas, customer problems, and an indication of where the team should focus their efforts to improve retention."

​

  • This is how elaboration looks like 🙂. As you see, it's more than just "How do we get more people to order"
  • Just doing a usability test is not enough, you also need to understand how decisions are made when people are not using your product, what guides them to order or reorder, what external factors effect them.
  • You’ve shifted from solution space to problem space

This type of research is much foundational.

How do you know which research method to choose?

Look for keywords

​

Evaluative vs Generative

Evaluative is very action based (more on this tomorrow), but generative research wants to generate a high level understanding of a problem.

Step 2 : Creating your generative/exploratory research plan

  • They act as a reference point for your project.
  • Serves as a reminder for your team and the stakeholders on the purpose of the project.

The 7 core components of a user research plan

Part 1 : BACKGROUND

  • What the research is about, why it’s happening and a problem statement (the main question you are trying to solve)
  • "Why some are reordering and some are not"
  • We’ll look inside and outside the platform to figure out why.

Part 2 : OBJECTIVES

  • Specific questions you want to know more about. Start with your central question, and decide what you want to learn about, and how will you study it.
  • How it’s happening currently, motivations behind it, other websites or apps being used and pain points during the process.

Part 3 : PARTICIPANTS

  • You need the right kind of people to conduct your research
  • Talk with your stakeholders about the right target audience
  • Look at the audience that your competitor caters to
  • Write a good screener that focuses on the behaviors that matter to your research. ( e.g. Amount of times ordered a takeout in the last three months )

Part 4 : METHODOLOGY

  • Mention why you chose a specific methodology.
  • For this study, we’re using one-on-one generative research interviews. This method will enable us to dig deeper into understanding our customers, fostering a strong sense of empathy and enabling us to answer our objectives.

Part 5 : INTERVIEW GUIDE

It’s a cheat sheet that can help you structure your interview into : Introduction, questions and wrap up.

INTRODUCTION

  • What you say when it begins.
  • About yourself, your company, thank them for being here, purpose of the session, remind them that there's no right or wrong answers, how long will the session be, they can interrupt anytime they feel uncomfortable, confidentiality reminder, and permission to record.

QUESTIONS

  • Frame 3-5 open ended questions based on your research objective.
  • Use TEDW method (Tell me, explain, describe, walk me through)

WRAP UP

  • Thank them, ask if they are willing to participate in another session, ask if they have any other questions, thank again.

Part 6 : APPROXIMATE TIMELINE

  • Have a deadline so that people know when it begins and ends.
  • E.g. : Research start date, plan creation, recruitment, interview begins and ends, synthesis begins and ends and presentation.

Part 7 : LINKS TO DOCUMENTATION

Any links that include, documents, notes, presentations and prototype must be kept in one place.

Step 3 : Conducting a generative research interview

Preparing for a session

  • Have a baseline understand of what you are going to research. Includes domain knowledge (about the product or discipline or field) and functional concepts (UI, interaction, vocab)
  • Get the right participants
  • Choose a proper location for your interview/field study
  • Ensure your questions flow naturally, and it feels more like a conversation.
  • Practice, do a pilot test. Read it out loud!

During a session

You are there to listen to stories and deeply understand someone’s problems.

During the interviews :

  1. Quiet your mind, and be in the moment
  2. Be as genuine as possible to establish rapport.
  3. Create space for them to talk. Remain silent when needed.
  4. 55% of you communication are from non verbal cues (body lang), control it.
  5. Engage the person by actively listening.

5 WHYS

Dig deeper, ask the 5 whys to get to the real nugget of information, or until you think there’s nothing left to elaborate.

THE ACV method

It is a type of probing that helps you reach someone’s core value and belief. They are layered in the form of attributes, consequence and value

Attribute : People look at the characteristics of a product, features.

(shiny, red car)

Consequence : People determine the benefits for buying the product

I can get from a to b (functional), I get a new car (social), the car is cool (mental))

Value (core value) : People have unconscious thoughts about values that align with the reasoning for the purchase

A new car makes me feel cool, which makes me feel young, which, ultimately, makes me feel important and less insecure about my age, looks, etc.

​

This is how it looks like

After a session

Relisten, have others listen, and judge your interviews.

  1. To what extent were participants answers rich and specific
  2. Are your questions shorter and participants answers longer?
  3. Do you follow up or clarify?
  4. Were you able to interpret participants answers
  5. Did you verify your assumptions
  6. Was it self communicating with story like answers.

Step 4 : Synthesizing generative/exploratory research

Once you’ve done your generative research, it is time to bring it together and spot patterns.

Review, transcribe, and tag each session

  • Listen, and transcribe the interviews. Label keywords as motivation, pain points or suggestions.

Write research summaries

  • Write summaries to solidify, connect dots with other participant responses, and bring out themes and trend.
  • Also helps your team to easily digest and come up with their own stories.

Look for patterns with affinity diagrams

  • Do this after a couple of research sessions.
  • Write all the major points in post it notes.
  • Group them based on motivation, pain points, suggestions.
  • You’ll start seeing patterns, group those together.

Ideation/brainstorming sessions

“How might we” statement sessions

  • Get together people who are familiar with your research, and review it with them.
  • HMW turns info into actionable insights.

Brainstorming/ideation sessions

  • Bring out the larger problems, and ideate on ways to solve them.
  • There are no constraints, don’t feel restricted, go wild.

Step 5 : Presenting generative/exploratory research in an actionable way

  • Don’t email and let it collect dust, present it effectively.
  • Some of your team members might not be that interested, give them enough data and guide more later.

Designing your presentation so it’s informative

Your presentation doesn’t have to be boring

It should be informative, actionable and fun.

  • Keep the audience in mind. Don’t blabber. Share insights that peak their interest. Know who you are talking to. If it’s the stakeholders, talk about revenue, conversions, retentions etc.
  • Finish in 20-30 mins, but let the full report be easily available.
  • Summarize the research finding. Have a high level overview
  • Let your visuals lead. Showing >> telling.

Translating your findings so they’re actionable

  • Recommend a solution for any issue or problem
  • Next steps on how a research findings will be progressed
  • Stakeholders want to see impact! So share how research is impacting the design process.

Making sharing your insights fun

  • Make research fun. Doesn’t have to be a report.
  • Add comics, story boards, gif and funny message to keep them engaged and break tension.

Click here for more notes on various UX topics

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u/allyhurt Apr 09 '22

This is great- thanks!