What is design research?
Design research helps build services that meet human needs.
Design research (or user research) helps us understand the people who use our services. If we understand them, we can better meet their needs. Interviews, observations, and usability testing are all types of design research.
How is design research different
Design research is different from other forms of feedback gathering. Consultations, business requirements gathering and public opinion research activities all have valuable purposes. But, across government, we see useful design research as different in purpose, audience, questions and frequency:
- Different purpose: Design research focuses on understanding people’s goals, behaviors and blockers. It doesn’t focus on overall opinions of the government or its services. It examines how people use services, and to what end.
- Different audience: Design research studies people who use a service. It doesn’t ask experts or proxies what people need. It gives a voice to the people themselves.
- Different questions: Design research doesn’t ask people what they want from a service. It focuses on identifying what they need from a service based on their goals and blockers.
- Different frequency: Design research happens repeatedly throughout the design of a service. We conduct a little research, often, instead of making it bigger.
Why do design research?
This kind of research helps us serve people better. Direct conversations with people show the diversity of their needs. Understanding the details of how people access a service help us design it better. And doing this research repeatedly makes it better.
- Last updated by Colin on June 7, 2019