Nanyi Jiang
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QUALITATIVE DESIGN RESEARCH METHODS WITH CONSIDERATIONS OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS AND BIAS
2019
Coursework
Advisors: Arden Stern
Abstract
Human intentions, needs and desires are among the few of the hardest ideas to grasp meaning but the most popular to be explored, especially in design realms. “What are users’ desires? What do they need and want? Why are they having this behavior?” are common questions design researchers striving to have answers for. Though understanding users’ intentions, needs and desires have long been the goals of design research, it has been hard for researchers to draw concrete conclusions.
Among the difficulties that hinder more accurate and reliable results are biases and unconscious behaviors. I want to underscore that they appear not only in research participants but also often design researchers themselves. In this essay, I focus on qualitative design research methods with an emphasis on those involving observation of user behaviors. For the sake of analysis, I divide design research into three phases: pre-research (planning and designing for the research, including its methods, structure and content), research experiment (carrying out of the actual experiment) and post-research (interpretation of the experiment and analysis for results).
Among the difficulties that hinder more accurate and reliable results are biases and unconscious behaviors. I want to underscore that they appear not only in research participants but also often design researchers themselves. In this essay, I focus on qualitative design research methods with an emphasis on those involving observation of user behaviors. For the sake of analysis, I divide design research into three phases: pre-research (planning and designing for the research, including its methods, structure and content), research experiment (carrying out of the actual experiment) and post-research (interpretation of the experiment and analysis for results).
In order to explore ways to enhance better understanding of user behaviors and reduce inaccuracy due to both parties’ biases and unconscious behaviors, I first examine current design research methodologies and what they lack, and then refer to studies in cognitive science related to behavioral tendencies, intention and minds. I propose new considerations for researchers to bear in mind during the research process in order to improve experiment results. At last, I believe leaders and managers of the design research team should take business anthropology into account while building the research team.
Research should not be a process following guidelines of established design methodologies but a more dynamic thought process for involving parties to mind possible unconsciousness during the process. While previous design researches focused more on the pre-research phase’s designing of research content, structure and methods, I advocate that emphasis should be put on 1) researchers’ awareness during interpretation of observation of participants and 2) better design of the research team even before the pre-research phase. Thus, better design research requires not only expertise of designers and researchers, but also attention and plan for managers.
Research should not be a process following guidelines of established design methodologies but a more dynamic thought process for involving parties to mind possible unconsciousness during the process. While previous design researches focused more on the pre-research phase’s designing of research content, structure and methods, I advocate that emphasis should be put on 1) researchers’ awareness during interpretation of observation of participants and 2) better design of the research team even before the pre-research phase. Thus, better design research requires not only expertise of designers and researchers, but also attention and plan for managers.