- A commonly overlooked, yet equally important step,
in the design research process
is evaluating the actual process itself.
It can be tempting to leave a project
once you've designed a successful solution.
However, it's important to take a step back,
review your overall research process
and discuss what worked well and what didn't.
This will help you to discover opportunities
for other projects.
And it will also highlight areas for improvement
in your process and your final outcome.
In the previous videos, we've shared some strategies
that can help you through this evaluation stage.
The Big 6 Information Literacy Model
requires two kinds of evaluation.
Judge the effectiveness of your products
and the efficiency of your process.
So let's look at accessing our end product.
The simple idea here is to look back
at your initial criteria and check to see
whether or not your final solution has met them.
Let's use the scenario we've discussed
earlier in this course.
We've been hired to re-brand a convenience store
which is rapidly losing business to its competitors.
And let's start with a broad question,
how successful is our new brand
and its revised touch points?
We can ask this question to the store owner
and to the customers to gauge their response
against the project goals.
Through feedback,
we've learned a lot of positive things
and maybe a few negative things.
To start, sales are up,
and that's always a good thing.
There's a new customer base
and people are using the space
to stop and have a quick meal at.
Okay, now a couple of negative things.
No one is using the coupons
and the store owners still feels
like there should be more daily visits to the store.
Not bad.
Look at all the initial criteria we're meeting.
I'd say we should celebrate.
Now as to the negative comments,
maybe the brand needs a little more time
to become known.
Or maybe the coupons need to be published
in a different format.
Or maybe there's a marketing channel to explore,
or perhaps the client trimmed back
on some of our initial services
and this is a reflection upon that.
If you find that a solution is falling short,
which I hope you don't,
you'll need to figure out why.
In this case, our shortcomings isn't necessarily
a reflection on the re-brand itself,
but may be more of a case of something additional
we can do, in which case, a simple conversation
with the client is in order to talk about
additional services that may help
to meet these expectations.
Okay, now let's look at evaluating
the efficiency of your process.
Did we deliver on time and stay within the allocated budget?
Take a look back through your hours spent on the project.
Also, consider how well you stayed on track
with major deadlines.
Let's say we did well and we're right on track
with our initial projections.
That's great.
So what helped make this possible?
Maybe we used some kind of production schedule
or a planning tool that helped to keep us on task.
If we had answered, "No,"
then we'd need to figure out where we went wrong.
Maybe we lost control of the design phase,
maybe we created a unrealistic schedule,
or, maybe we had several research participants
back out on us, delaying our research process.
To help stay on track,
I like to adapt my research logic model.
I add an extra column somewhere near the top
where I can assign a schedule.
I find this is helpful, not only to stay on track
during the process, but also for me to plan ahead
when I'm at the beginning of a project
and I need to figure out how much time I need.
If we're off track, we can also take a look
at how we collected our research.
Did we use the best, most appropriate research tools
to gather the information we needed?
In this example, we used observational notetaking
and interviews to gain a better understanding
of the customers in the store.
Specifically, what they did in the store
and what their opinion was about the store.
What could we have done differently or better?
Were we bad at taking observational notes?
Did we ask all the best questions in our interviews?
Would a brief survey have been quicker
than conducting interviews?
Were the interviews even valuable
to this process at all?
This is the time to be critical of your process.
Doing so will make you more efficient
at conducting research
and improve the outcome of your designs.
Remember, this is as much about finding out
where you're successful, as it is about failing.
And be sure to be aware of both
and give yourself credit where it's due.