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Services: Discovery and Insights User-Centered Design Facilitation |
Are you entering a new market, introducing a new product into an existing market, or otherwise want to know more about the needs of the people you’re designing for? Gain new insights into what your intended users are doing—the work or life activity you want to support—and the motivations behind their actions. Your design opportunity is to invent new and better ways to support their work and help them achieve their goals.
To do this, identify the kinds of people and activities you want to support with your product, then go visit them to learn first-hand the details of what they do in real life, why they do it, and what problems they encounter. People carry out activities without thinking about why they are doing them, so you need to spend time with them while they are involved in the activity of interest to inquire into what they are doing and the reasons behind their actions. Otherwise you risk making it up!
The resulting data can be consolidated into models representing different facets of the activities in your user population: scope of activity and related issues, task details, tool and artifact usage, communication and collaboration with others, elements of self-identity, and more.
Models inspire new insights, design ideas, and a comprehensive understanding of what matters most to people and where they are experiencing the most pain—pain they may not even realize they are experiencing because they are so used to it. You can focus on producing delightful experiences by more deeply designing to underlying intents and emotional drivers that emerge in the models. The data will also provide a coherent representation of the user’s work and environment to help you ideate a systemic response.