Conducting research during your design process – it can be done very quickly, very small

‘There’s no time. We don’t have the budget.’

Just a couple of reasons why research sometimes gets sidelined in the design process. And that’s a shame, because whatever the circumstances, there’s always room for research.

It doesn’t have to be a full-scale UX test straight away. Or an exploratory study. Whilst you’re designing, you can gather input very quickly and on a small scale. Just a few hours is enough to achieve something valuable.

How exactly? We’ll walk you through a few examples so you can apply this to your own process.

Take a Design Survey

An important research tool we use during the design process is the Design Survey. We use it in our work for clients such as NLZIET and Signify. A Design Survey allows you to gather a lot of input in a short space of time about the direction you want to take.

A Design Survey is essentially just a questionnaire, but with added depth. You don’t just ask questions – you can also show designs and pages. By asking clever questions, you can find out whether your design achieves the goal you have in mind. It does take a bit of thought to put together a survey like this, but it allows you to make rapid progress early on in the process without having to set up a full-scale research project. 

The main advantages of a Design Survey:

• Your costs are lower. You don’t need to set up a whole test.
   
• You get feedback quickly. How quickly depends, amongst other things, on your target audience. You could launch the survey in the morning and analyse the results by the afternoon. In practice, however, you often want to achieve a certain distribution and sample size. So the survey will usually remain live for a few days.
   
• You get a large sample size. You receive feedback from far more people than during a UX test. The downside is that you don’t learn the ​‘why’ behind participants’ choices and behaviour.

Organise check-ins with your target audience

A ​‘Check-in’ is simply a conversation with your target audience. We do this, for example, for the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport. We are currently working with them to design a new tool. During this process, we check in weekly with the people who will be using the tool.

These check-ins are very straightforward.
In a one-to-one setting, you go through the design with the users. You show them what you’ve been working on. You share Figma screens. You explain where you have doubts and where you need input – because you can work it all out for yourself, but you can also just ask. You carry out these check-ins continuously, throughout the entire design process. You maintain an ongoing dialogue with your target group. As you continue to develop the product, you’ll constantly have new topics to discuss. Depending on the feedback you receive, you decide: do I really need to act on this? And if so, how? A nice bonus of the check-ins is that the users of your product or service feel involved and heard.

There are all sorts of other ways to carry out research effectively during the design process. For example, you could simply pop outside to run your ideas past people in the street. Or show something to someone you know – that’s better than nothing.

Larger-scale studies are still needed

Just because you’re gathering input quickly and in small steps throughout the design process doesn’t mean you no longer need to carry out other types of research at all. 

In Design Surveys or Check-ins, you mainly focus on specific parts of your product or service. You then incorporate this into the bigger picture. It’s very useful for making decisions during the design process. 

If you ultimately want to run through and validate the entire flow or process with your users, you’ll need to set aside a bit more time and conduct a more organised study. You can do this, for example, through a UX test or a concept test. You go into greater depth, you can discuss much more, and you analyse the entire experience. You’ll find out why something works – or doesn’t work. You certainly mustn’t skip that step.