Overview

The Government Service Manual does a great job of outlining the different research methods that you can do as part of your project. This includes a breakdown of the different methods and techniques and at which research stage you should adopt them: User research – Service Manual – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

These are the research methods that can be adopted:

Depth Interviews

In-depth interviews allow you to dig deeper into an individual, their context and what they need from a product and service. They allow you to understand the problems that they are experiencing and give an explanation for why they do things in a certain way. The best time to capture research questions is at the start of the new development phase, especially discovery, alpha and beta.

Focus Groups

Focus Groups bring together groups of individuals mostly for discussing common topics. A facilitator will manage the discussion, inviting the different stakeholders to participate in order to gain an understanding of the different viewpoints. This allows people to understand the expertise and knowledge of the group as a whole. It is a good way to quickly capture more qualitative data.

Workshops

These are like focus groups but usually focus on participants engaging with tools such as journey maps and service blueprints. Workshops are a good way of facilitating discussion alongside knowledge extraction tools such as brainstorming.

Contextual research

Contextual research means visiting people in their everyday environment (like their home, work or school) to observe how they do an activity. Contextual Research is helpful to really understand the problem space by observing the barriers and problems people face in a real-life context.

Watching someone complete a task in familiar surroundings with their own equipment (and usual distractions) can help you understand what they need from your service. You can learn a lot by observing people inside and outside your organisation such as caseworkers or contact centre advisors.

Pop up research

Pop-up research is a great way to achieve short informal interviews and usability tests in places used by the people you want to talk to, such as libraries, GP surgeries, local festivals and events. Alternatively, a great way to access or recruit participants at things like community events. It can help to gain insights quickly, access a broad cross-section of the public, or talk to specific user groups that are difficult to reach such as students. This is also a great way to understand regional differences that will feed into later research decisions. Pop-ups should be attended in pairs and be well planned with clear objectives, pre-agreed times and practicalities with the venue. Researchers should have a pack that includes an ID badge, branded advertising material, consent forms, test or interview-specific documents and data sheets, and equipment (laptops, cameras, audio recording devices etc).