Primary research methods are the go-to methods that will give you the best understanding of who you are designing your product for. A snapshot of the methods we use at Sento include:
These are best conducted in your end-user’s natural, day-to-day environment. This allows you to engage in direct dialogue and see the typical behaviours and influences of the user’s surroundings in the most natural way. Interview questions can be highly structured, or used as more of a semi-structured guide.
Most importantly, they should help keep the conversation aligned with your research goals, but still allow room for meaningful ‘side chats’ to happen. Always prepare your questions prior to the interview and keep them open-ended. This will encourage honest answers and avoid biasing responses. If conducting interviews remotely, try to do this with video so you can still observe body language.
This is where we leverage the power of silence. When we listen and observe someone in users’ everyday work or home environment performing a series of common tasks, we collect invaluable data. It is important to make the user feel comfortable being watched and also to keep them engaged in the process. You need to say enough to ensure they feel comfortable, but not so much you lead their actions. We encourage a ‘think out loud’ approach to better understand motivations for completing their everyday tasks.
Sento Solutions are experts in planning and leading user research in product design. We can work with you to figure out the right research method(s) that will add the most value to your product development process.
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