“Our website needs redesigning. Our customers can’t find what they want on it.”

I think this is still a fairly typical client brief for a small to medium sized web design agency to receive, even in 2018. I’m also pretty sure you might hear something similar from time to time if you work in an in-house digital team. If you were approached by an internal stakeholder or client and this was your brief, how would you approach this job? What research would you do?

I have written previously about The Research Funnel and given some examples of the kind of research you might do during each stage but how does this really work in practice? I thought it might be helpful to think about it from the stand point of an example project.

Like most people (I think) I have a pretty constant stream of stuff that runs around my head. When things are busy at home or at work, I’d say 80% of the stuff is logistical and proceedural — mostly internal to do lists. “Get this child here, help this child with their homework, take the dog for a walk, figure out why this child is still in their pyjamas five minutes before we need to leave for school!”

When I started at Monotype four years ago, I was the only dedicated researcher in the company but research formed part of many people’s jobs. As a way of supporting a culture of customer research and insights, I created a research knowledge base for those people who conducted, commissioned or used research as part of their job. As I wasn’t responsible for doing all the research (and nor could I hope to) it became necessary to have a way of talking about the kinds of projects I could really add value to and which projects people should do under their own steam. I came up with a simple category system that I called The Research Funnel. I wrote about it on my blog and iterated on it over time.

I read a post about using different methodologies for user experience research written by Vicki Riley from the Co-Op Digital team a couple of weeks ago. I very much agree with her conclusion that it's easy to stick to a research method because it's familiar or we feel confident using it. The market research industry are constantly berated for relying on focus groups but I am constantly surprised by how much the user research community rely on interviewing (often in a lab).

Today I said goodbye to my friends and colleagues at Monotype and started my freelance life. This last four years has been a real education into the world of type and fonts and I've been lucky to learn from some talented people. It was a highlight to visit the archive and the recent exhibition of The Wolpe Collection with Toshi Omagari but my favourite memory will be the time I interviewed Sir Quentin Blake's archivist during a customer research project. I am grateful for all the support, collaboration and friendship from my (ex) colleagues. I am glad to be leaving the Monotype legacy library in their safe hands.

Last night I was talking to my (Design Leader) husband, Mark and he commented that he thought User Experience Research was seeing a similar trajectory to Design Leadership. I disagreed. I said that I don’t think ‘Research Leadership’ is a thing in the same way that ‘Design Leadership’ is a thing. I said that this is because the qualities that make a good researcher mean that researchers are often the glue in a UX team not the shining star. There are some notable exceptions who shine brightly but in general I think researchers have a different role and way of doing things compared to designers. Now of course I maybe completely over generalising but I’ve worked with a lot of researchers over the years — Audience, Market and User Researchers.

I read this post from Peter Merholz earlier on and it really resonated with me. I'm a real advocate for designers and product managers doing research. It was what my talk for Industry Conf centred around a few years ago. Absolutely yes, designers and product managers should be talking to customers, users and the real people who use their services to build empathy and understanding for their needs. It's fundamental stuff. It's also just the way it is in a lot of organisations.

At the end of 2016, I commissioned an external research consultancy - Esposito Research and Strategy to conduct a Cross Company Segmentation project for Monotype. Together with my team, Muriel our consultant, and internal stakeholders, I managed this process and communication of the outcomes.

On the 2nd Feb 2009, Designing for the Web was published as an eBook and Five Simple Steps the imprint was born. The printed book went on sale in April 2009.

Last year when I'd been in my job at Monotype a few months, I wrote about something I'd thrown together called the Research Funnel. Since then I've moved teams, been joined by a colleague and am now focusing on research across the whole of Monotype rather than just one business unit. When I first showed the funnel to my new colleague Dave, we decided that this could be a really useful tool for us to use as we talk to the different business units. We iterated upon it and it now looks like this. 

I read this interesting post by @miekd this morning. I had the exact same conversation with some of my colleagues in Boston last week.