Before you start

Before you start you need to know:

• The service area you are working with
• The core project team
• The user groups
• Project timelines

For user-centred design to truly work, you need to make sure you involve all the stakeholders that need to be involved. It is vital that you uncover all the potential aspects that could influence the project outcome and ensure the people who need to be involved from the start.

Research Aim and Objectives

A research aim describes the overarching purpose and goal of the research project.

This should be figured out with the core project team and service area to ensure that everyone understands what the research aims to achieve. This will then help the formulation of a research plan and research questions.

A research aim is a statement outlining the main goal of the research. The length of this statement can vary depending on the breadth and scope of the research project but should outline:

• The context of the research
• The impact the research will have

Example

An example of a research aim was for a project called Help to Help Yourself. The focus of this project was understanding the challenges of finding information and advice to help people stay healthy and well in Somerset. This project had a large scope, involving all user groups trying to access information and understand the different sources of information that exist.

Therefore, the following vision statement was created:

The Help to Help Yourself aims to ensure that people have clear and easy access to information and support in Somerset [the context] when and how they need it in order to stay healthy and well. [the impact]

Defining scope and user groups

A user group is any group that influences the research output. This includes both internal and external users. Below outlines some examples of internal and external user groups, there could be more but that gives you an understanding of what user groups you could be researching with:

Creating Research Questions

Now you’ve got your vision statement, it’s time to put together some research questions that will help you understand the user group needs. A research question is something you want the project to get an answer to. The research questions should be defined in collaboration with the project team and the key stakeholders.

The group should have the opportunity to write down all the research questions based on the vision. This should then be followed with prioritisation to identify what are the most important questions to be answered by the group.

You could do this collaboratively using Google Jamboard or Microsoft Whiteboard. Below outlines a template for doing this:

For the Google Jamboard, you can share the link to collaborate on the board. This gives people the opportunity to add their questions during the facilitated discussion. During the session, encourage people to share what they are adding to the board with the group to understand if other attendees also agree.

Define a research plan

The research plan will outline:

• The research aims and objectives
• The research questions
• Who’s involved at each stage
• User groups and recruitment [how will you recruit people]
• Timelines
• Research Methods
• Analysis & Outcomes

A research plan outlines the objectives and approach that will be taken during the project. The plan and research questions will be everchanging and reactive to what you’re learning about users and the service area.

You will have already worked with the core team and external stakeholders to capture research questions. It is important that research questions are based on what you want to discover about the individuals and not focussed on assumptions and opinions.

Prior to starting the research plan, you will have decided what user groups the product or service is for. It is important to note, that as you research you may uncover other user groups that fall into scope of this project. This will mean you will need to incorporate them into your research plan to ensure your discovery caters for each group.

There may be certain parameters and constraints that will impact the research. These could be, and are not limited to:

• Recruitment
  • If you have a budget to use an external recruitment agency, then this is a great way at engaging those hard-to-reach groups and ensures diversity in the research
  • If you don’t have the budget, make use of existing groups of users, and digital volunteers and contact the comms team about using social media and existing comms and events
• Timelines
  • The project may need a quick turnaround thus requiring a research plan that may not be as in-depth due to the time available
  • In response to this, prioritise the most important research questions and focus on these
• Capacity
  • The resource to do user research might be limited so balance the time you have and the research with what you can actually achieve in the time given