Written by Rob Hudson
Posted in Design

How often have you seen a prototype design offered without really exploring carefully to whom it speaks, how they will actually use it and what they will expect from it? Instead, many prototypes are based on what I would call "prespectations" (preconceived expectations) of what will be desired without probing behind the overt. Often we get so familiar with something that we can’t separate what we “know” from what is really happening in the market. We get so used to filtering information through our own lenses that we can miss new opportunities to better serve our audiences or to attack a new opportunity. How can we achieve knowing without showing? Understand what users want before they even know it themselves. If you show them a proposed design without underlying understanding, then they may unconsciously "lie" about what they truly need.

A few years ago, two colleagues of mine and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours alone with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO and brother to founder David Kelley. Tom wrote a fascinating book called "Ten Faces of Innovation" and he was working with us to rethink innovation. He asked us to develop our ability to "see with new eyes". He called this "Vuja De". It's the sense that you have never seen something before in your life. Quite the opposite of Deja Vu. This is at the core of their process of innovation. Over the years I have worked with IDEO more than most people can afford to do in a career (6 projects at various levels - online video twice, photos, communications, networking, and home media) and it has been an honor each time. They have been the top design firm in the world and featured on the cover of Time Magazine's issue on innovation. Their process includes design ethnography followed by top notch creative thinking to derive what are called "frameworks" (maps of understanding) that turn into concepts and eventually into design prototypes.

How often have you seen a prototype design offered without really exploring carefully to whom it speaks, how they will actually use it and what they will expect from it? Instead, many prototypes are based on what I would call "prespectations" (preconceived expectations) of what will be desired without probing behind the overt. Often we get so familiar with something that we can’t separate what we “know” from what is really happening in the market. We get so used to filtering information through our own lenses that we can miss new opportunities to better serve our audiences or to attack a new opportunity. How can we achieve knowing without showing? Understand what users want before they even know it themselves. If you show them a proposed design without underlying understanding, then they may unconsciously "lie" about what they truly need.

A few years ago, two colleagues of mine and I had the pleasure of spending a few hours alone with Tom Kelley, General Manager of IDEO and brother to founder David Kelley. Tom wrote a fascinating book called "Ten Faces of Innovation" and he was working with us to rethink innovation. He asked us to develop our ability to "see with new eyes". He called this "Vuja De". It's the sense that you have never seen something before in your life. Quite the opposite of Deja Vu. This is at the core of their process of innovation. I have worked with IDEO more than most people can afford to do in a career (6 projects at various levels - online video twice, photos, communications, networking, and home media) and it has been an honor each time. They have been the top design firm in the world and featured on the cover of Time Magazine's issue on innovation. Their process includes design ethnography followed by top notch creative thinking to derive what are called "frameworks" (maps of understanding) that turn into concepts and eventually into design prototypes.

In design ethnography, our goal is to learn what people expect to do (desire), what they actually do and a sense of the “why”, what context they do it in (workspace, computing environment), what surprises took the user in new directions (positive or negative) and then, across the user sample, what frameworks can be derived to model the behaviors. The frameworks will be used to communicate the underlying learning, while the actual user stories serve to clarify and add character to the frameworks. In the end, frameworks are not our goal, however. We use the frameworks to derive concept snapshots that can be assembled into visualized concept models. These concept models can be used to gather feedback from other users through qualitative research as well as to catalyze further ideation and UI design. Tom Kelley summarizes the simple ways that his company lets innovation happen as follows:

1. Set aside what you know; observe with an open mind.
2. Don’t judge. Simply observe and empathize.
3. Draw on your own instincts to develop hypotheses about the emotional underpinnings of observable behavior.
4. To see what’s always been there but has gone unnoticed, cultivate “Vuja De”, the sense of seeing something for the 1st time, even if witnessed many prior times.
5. Keep daily “bug lists” (things that bug you or others) & “idea wallets” (problems needing solving, innovative concepts)
6. Look for insights where the learning may be found (beyond the obvious, in unusual settings/places)

Walt Dickie (partner at Creative & Response Research Services, Inc., Chicago, Dec. 1997) also provides some useful thoughts on what he calls observational research (ethnography). He laments that “observation remains the most under-utilized qualitative technique in marketing research”. Reasons given for this are that the research seems like a waste of time – “interesting, but useless”. In fact, the failures stem from the fact that…

Learning from watching is, in fact, hard. If you ask a not-very-deep question in a focus group, you still may get a deep and revealing answer. But if you don’t know how to think about what you’ll see when you watch normal people doing stuff, you won’t learn much from it. And in observational research, as in all qualitative research, it’s the "thinking about" that’s the key.

He lists "Seven Rules for Observational Research":

1. Look for the ordinary, not the extraordinary - be open to new learning about fundamentals
2. Nothing people do is "natural" - find the rules and why and when they are broken
3. Become the master of the obvious - find the center, the core...don't ignore the obvious
4. Don’t fear the details - not just what they did, but why they thought to do it or not do it
5. Identify the whole activity - context, behavior sets, entries and exits
6. Let the arrow find the target - If your task is too tightly defined, all you’ll see is what you expected to see.
7. Marry observation methods with traditional qualitative research techniques - watch, think, verbalize, test

In the end, design ethnography is simply about putting the USER at the front of the design process. The results can be tremendous.