JUST ENOUGH RESOURCES
Design Research Resources & Further Reading
I’ve organized resources by topic. These include articles, videos, podcasts, and books to give you options based on how much time you want to invest and your preferred learning style. Several of these are pulled from larger collections, so if you like a particular expert’s style, you can find more from that individual or organization.
We update this list from time to time.
Critical Thinking
It’s easy for bad judgment to creep in when teams are moving fast under pressure. Bias can completely undermine the research process. Strong collaboration and critical thinking are the necessary foundation for all design and research activities.
“Cognitive Bias Cheat Sheet” by Buster Benson
An awareness of potential biases can help guard against this. The cheat sheet is available as a poster.
Design for Cognitive Bias by David Dylan Thomas
A brief book about designing with awareness of the irrational forces that shape decisions.
DDT’s talk “Fight Bias with Content Strategy” 🎥
“Why Facts Don’t Change Our Minds” by Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker
Article about a book on the origins of confirmation bias Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts That Will Save Us
Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman
Cognitive ease rules everything around us. Some of the studies referenced in the book have been caught up in the replication crisis swirling around the social sciences. However, I find it’s still a helpful framing for working to reduce errors in judgment and act with more intention.
Dr. Kahneman’s 2011 talk at Google 🎥 1:03:00
Animated summary of the Thinking Fast and Slow 🎥 7:25
“We Are All Confident Idiots” by David Dunning
Research David Dunning wrote about the eponymous cognitive bias for Pacific Standard, which was a fantastic social science magazine. Updated June 2017.
Collaboration
Designing Together: The collaboration and conflict management handbook for creative professionals by Dan Brown
Dan Brown, the co-founder of Eight Shapes, writes about design collaboration specifically and has experience working in many domains. Everything he writes is useful.
Dan’s talk “Managing Conflict in the Design Process” 🎥
“What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team” by Charles Duhigg, The New York Times
Research reveals surprising truths about why some work groups thrive and others falter. The key is psychological safety.
Mixed Methods Applied Research
Just Enough Research by Erika Hall
In case you got to this page some other way, you should read the book.
Erika’s Just Enough Research talk, princess style 🎥
An Event Apart was at Disneyworld one year.
“The 9 Rules of Design Research” by Erika Hall
An overview that links to several other pieces.
Mixed Methods by Sam Ladner
Sam Ladner, PhD is a sociologist who bridges the academic/industry gap. If you are interested in adding more rigor to the practice, she is a good person to follow. Read everything she has written.
Dr. Ladner talks about how to manage the knowledge generated by research 🔊 + 📄
Process
There is no one right way to combine design research with the chosen delivery process with the business operations that drive priorities, so here are some ideas.
“Six tactics to maximize UX research in agile” by Kuppy Tanaporn Benjapolakul
“The Horizon of Inquiry: How to fit research questions into any process” by Erika Hall
“How to Integrate Frequent Design Research into Your Agile Process” by Danielle Traitz
“Accounting for User Research in Agile” by Rachel Krause
Specific Techniques and Methods
Based on my experience solving problems alongside clients in a wide variety of industries, I have a strong point of view on which methods are most useful to help answer product and service design questions. There is a lot of what I consider to be “research and design theater” out there, activities that are appealing to leaders and organizations for reasons other than effectiveness in solving business problems efficiently.
The most important principle is that if something helps you do better work in a more collaborative manner, then use it. Feel free to try any other methods, activities, and techniques you encounter, as long as you approach with clear goals and appropriate skepticism. Research tools become dangerous when they impede rather than assist critical thinking, and some software tool makers overpromise the ease and utility of the methods they support.
Research Questions and Planning
You must start with the right questions to get useful answers. Many product teams jump straight to the research activity without stopping to consider what they need to know. And there is a tremendous amount of confusion about the difference between a research question and an interview or survey question.
“Research Questions Are Not Interview Questions” by Erika Hall
How to Write a Research Question Wordvice
“A 9-Step Process for Prioritizing Research Projects” by Nikki Anderson, Dscout
“5 Prioritization Methods in UX Roadmapping by Sarah Gibbons, NN/g
Practical Design Discovery by Dan M. Brown
This book focuses entirely on the Discovery phase.
Interviewing
The key to effective interviewing is not talking, it’s listening.
Practical Empathy by Indi Young
Indi Young is the expert on conducting deep listening interviews to understand the problem space. This is a guide to understanding how other people think.
Articles by Indi:
Time to Listen
Deep listening to move from a product-focused to a purpose focused strategy.
Listening Deeply
Illustrates the difference between a more formal research interview and deep listening.
Building Rapport
How to create a safe space for a candid conversation.
How to Conduct User Interviews
Additional practical tips to consider.
Self Care as a UX Researcher with Vivianne Castillo 🔊 + 📄
This interview covers how to take care of yourself and your team when you are participating in an emotionally taxing research process.
Diary Studies
If you need to understand the context of behavior beyond what interviews allow, diary studies can be effective. They are resource intensive to plan, conduct, and synthesize. A common use is as a follow-up with a subset of interview participants. For example, you might interview 20 caregivers, and then select 5 as participants in a diary study to better understand their workflow or situations they encounter in the moment.
Diary Studies: Understanding Long-Term User Behavior and Experiences by Kim Flaherty, NN/g
Diary Study Chapter from the UX Research Field Guide
Diary Studies: User research resources for beginners and pros by Brad Dalrymple
Use a Diary Study to Extend Your UX research by Jodie Moule
Surveys
Surveys are an expert-level research method for which many companies have created simple tools with insufficient guidance. There are a lot of ways to go wrong with a survey, but good data and bad data are often indistinguishable. And many design teams make a big, unsubstantiated leap from opinions to behaviors.
Five Tips for Designing an Effective Survey from Professor Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell, founder of the Evidence Lab
This short piece from the Duke Global Health Institute links to a longer talk on best practices and a related research paper.
Surveys That Work by Caroline Jarrett
This is a solid introductory book.
Podcast interview with Caroline 🔊 + 📄
Covers the key concepts after some initial biographical background chat.
Writing Survey Questions Pew Research Center
If you’re interested in opinion polling, Pew Research Center is the place.
Survey’s Up! by Erika Hall
How to remove risk from your survey design
Where Net Promoter Score Goes Wrong by Christina Stahlkopf, HBR
NPS is as problematic as it is popular, this piece breaks down why.
The Inventor of Customer Satisfaction Surveys Is Sick of Them, Too by Jennifer Kaplan, Bloomberg
"The instant we have a technology to minimize surveys, I'm the first one on that bandwagon," Fred Reichheld [the inventor of NPS] said.
Usability Testing and Other Evaluative Methods
In order to design an effective test, it’s essential to have clear criteria and make sure that it is possible to test against those criteria. And remember, user acceptance testing and usability testing are two different things.
Evaluative Research Methods User Interviews
Goes in depth on several types of evaluation, qualitative and quantitative.
Usability Testing 101 NN/g
A deep dive into usability specifically from the OG experts.
UATs vs UTs Reassemble
“Both tests are crucially important in understanding how your product works. It’s just that they answer quite different questions about your product and how it works.”
Qualitative Analysis
There are so many approaches and tools for analyzing and synthesizing your qualitative data it can be overwhelming. The important thing is to design a process that is efficient and effective for your team. Without boundaries and a pragmatic approach, you could easily spend weeks analyzing your interview notes. These are some starting points.
Thematic Analysis
This is a solid overview from NN/g.
Analyzing User Research
Another chapter from the UX Research Guide.
Using Microsoft Word for Qualitative Coding 🎥
Dr. Jarek Kriukow has a channel about qualitative research primarily for grad students. This video shows how to use a general-purpose tool and is helpful to understanding before selecting something more specialized.
Grounded theory research: A design framework for novice researchers by lona Chun Tie, Melanie Birks, and Karen Francis
Similar material to the NN/g article with more academic rigor and citations.
Introduction to grounded theory (with tremendous energy) 🎥 No one is more hyped about qualitative research than Dr. Gerben Moerman at the University of Amsterdam.
Dr Moerman’s quick overview of all types of qualitative analysis 🎥
Reporting and Storytelling
Learning is one thing, and remembering what you learned, or getting someone else to buy in, is another.
Telling Stories with Data in 3 Steps 🎥
This 5-minute video from HBR really get to the point. Applicable to any presentation.
Perfecting the art of the UX Research report by Katya Hott
Very practical, experience-based piece on how different types of documentation work for different organizational contexts.
Design Is Storytelling by Ellen Lupton
One of my favorite books about design by Ellen Lupton, a design educator and prolific author. The focus is visual design, and the material might seem tangential, but the principles are interesting and useful.
A talk covering material from the book 🎥
Wendy MacNaughton
Wendy is a hero of compassion, joy, and mutual understanding through drawing. Her latest project is getting strangers to draw each other.
Service Design
Service Design Tools & Methods poster by Iran Narges
Good Services by Lou Downe
Great starting point for the principles. Also, a good blog on the site.
This Is Service Design Doing edited by Marc Stickdorn
A big book about everything.
Marc’s talk Doing is the Hard Part: How to Embed Service Design in Organizations 🎥
And finally, a cool thing
Where The Light Gets In is a Regenerative Design Field Kit, a tool designed to expand your perspective as you observe the world around you, reflect on the present, and contemplate potential futures.
