Why design research is making our designs worse

 

By Alen Faljic

As a business designer working at a design agency, I often found myself teamed up with a design researcher on various projects. They would organize our research, set up interviews, recruit research participants, conduct interviews, and even lead the synthesis. That’s a lot of tasks! But they managed to do it all really well.

But one thing that always nagged me was their lack of business awareness. They would over-index on the desirability and usually overlook the business side. And this would show in the results of the project.

Yes, we would have super strong arguments for the user side but we were usually thin on the business side. How big was the opportunity? Does it fit with the company's existing business model? Who will pay for the product? Without answering these questions, we couldn’t (and didn’t) convince business people to go further with our designs. 

To solve this problem, I started collecting business questions that I would ask in the research phase. So, dear design researchers (and everyone else doing design research), hopefully, some of these questions come in handy in your next research. 

Talking with business stakeholders

Customers

  • Who are a company’s main customers?

  • Are the user and buyer different people? Who is the main decision maker for the purchase of our product?

  • How long do customers usually stay with us?

Business Model

  • How does your company generate revenue?

  • How many companies are involved in making a product/service? How? 

  • Can you draw your business model for me? Just list a few key players and draw the flow of money and goods among them.

  • Who are your company’s key partners? 

  • How do partners benefit from the partnership? 

  • With which partners do you have good relationships? 

  • Which partners would you happily change? Why haven’t you yet? 

Competitors

  • Who are the company's direct competitors? 

  • What about indirect competitors? They solve the same problem but with a different product or service.  

  • Which customers choose us over competitors and vice versa? 

  • Are any competitors growing really fast? Are some falling behind? Why? 

Strategy

  • What is a competitor's competitive advantage over us and vice versa? 

  • What do most companies in our industry do and we decided to not do?

Talking with users

Willingness and ability to pay 

  • How are you currently solving the problem? 

  • How much time or money are you currently (monthly/weekly) spending on solving the problem? How often?

  • What do you do for a living? [This is to learn about their ability to pay]

Purchasing process

  • How did you buy your current solution? 

  • Was it an impulse buy or a planned decision?

  • Who was involved in the process?

  • How long was the process?

  • Have you tried any other solutions before that?

  • What alternatives have you considered in the process?

Analogous purchases

  • How did you buy X? 

  • How are you paying for X? 

  • How would you ideally pay for X? How much? How often? 

  • Who else was involved in the purchasing process?

You won’t use all of these questions for every research project. So, think of the above as a menu of questions you can choose from. Just go through each bucket and see what fits. Maybe you even get an idea for new questions that work great for your current project. 

Try it out and you’ll see that by incorporating these questions, we can ensure that our designs are not only desirable but also viable! Remember, design without considering the business is like a ship without a compass. It might look pretty but it won't go far.

Alen Faljic2 Comments