- The tools and strategies we've discussed in this course
can benefit your design process in many ways,
but not every project that shows up on your desk
is going to welcome a long comprehensive research process.
More often than not, you'll have to deal
with some kind of restraints,
and most restraints are often involving time and money.
Projects move quickly, and the business world
expects an exceptional product delivered
for a fair cost in a short amount of time.
On top of that, we also have to battle with the notion
that design is nothing more than a simple act of aesthetics.
Where does that leave us?
How can we include research in a project
with time and budgetary restrictions?
Well, sometimes we need to get a little creative,
or at the very least we need to learn how
to modify the tools and methods
we use to work under various conditions.
I'm going to share some ideas with you,
and you should know that some are safer than others.
When you limit or scale back your research,
as I'm going to suggest, you have to do so carefully.
Let's take a look.
Use as much secondary research as possible.
This is without a doubt a great way to save time and money.
You can learn a great deal of contextual information
that will help inform your project,
and help you to define your problem.
You can also use secondary research
to analyze your competition,
by performing a competitive analysis.
Take a look back on chapter four to our discussion
on performing a competitive analysis.
This can be a great way to position your problem
against other similar problems,
and then what has already been successful or unsuccessful.
You may also learn specific facts along the way
that may help you to define the details
of your project with a level of validation,
so that your client will understand your reasoning.
The bottom line is that secondary research can be a
relatively quick and inexpensive process that can
help get you thinking on the right path,
and help you validate your decisions along the way.
Cut down on your sample size,
or the number of research participants you use.
Here's one of those suggestions
I told you to be careful with.
Let's say that ideally you'd like to survey 50 people
with a series of questions about a problem
or prototype you're working on.
Connecting with those 50 people
can take some significant time and effort,
so instead try asking a much smaller amount of people,
say maybe 10 the same survey questions.
Your answers may show more of a bias,
but you will have some responses
that may help you moving forward.
The thing to remember here is that by working with less
people your research is likely to be much more subjective.
It's important to try to pick the best 10 possible
individuals that represent your overall potential audience,
this will help to eliminate some of that subjectivity,
although your research may still be questioned.
It's highly recommended that you have some form
of objective knowledge maybe through secondary research
that supports any major decisions you make
based on results from quick surveys or interviews.
Rely on conducting evaluative research.
This type of research is often understood as a
valuable step in the process from a business perspective.
It looks like this, create something first,
then test it with a potential market to see if it's
successful before going into full scale production.
Though this isn't ideal, making quick or rapid prototypes
and putting them into the hands of potential users
will allow you to observe and gather feedback
about what is and isn't working.
If you're forced to move quickly through a design process,
making decisions based on a lot of assumptions,
then it's important to conduct some element
of user testing so that you can
verify the details of your solution.
Pick research tools that generate quick results.
Observational note taking and quick interviews will
generate valuable data in a short amount of time.
For instance, if you were to go out and watch people shop
in a mall for an afternoon you would learn
a lot about the behavior of those shoppers.
Let's say you also randomly stopped a dozen individuals,
and asked them a few questions
about their shopping experience,
you'd have even more information.
In the course of a few afternoons,
certain research told such as these
will generate a lot of valuable information.
The real advice here is that if you
have less time work more directly.
Go straight to the source,
and seek the information you're looking for
in the easiest and quickest way possible.