design the way you research in order to inform design
research activity design, Adobe Omniture Summit
Understanding of the problem and the users is always fundamental in human-centered design. There are a lot of existing research methodologies that will help you, but sometimes, you need to design the research to inform the design. In order to get insights for suite product integration, we designed an activity that the customers participated during the Omniture Summit 2011. We distilled valuable insights from the data collected to better inform designs that account for larger suite ecosystem.
We had already realized that a suite of web analytics and marketing products is supposedly to work seamlessly together while at the same time covering different aspects of online marketing. In order to account for the larger suite ecosystem in product design, we need better understanding of how products are related in marketing workflow. The annual Omniture Summit is a great venue for us UX designers to access to lots of users, so we decided to use this opportunity to get insights about suite integration.
We identified our goal, brainstormed lots of different activity ideas. In order to evaluate which idea would bring a better result, we rapidly prototyped several activities using white board drawings and post-it notes, and asked co-workers to run through. After considering the research goal, dry run results, and the actual environment of the summit venue, we were able to decide on one activity – letting users self report how they use a pair of products together on a magnet, and place it into a semantic differential space that describes the usage.
We iterated the activity design and worked out logistic details in collaboration with marketing department and contract graphic designers. We successfully carried out this activity during Summit, and collected 60+ data points.
We analyzed those data, identified four different models of how products are used together, and generated insights and shared with UX team and product managers.
Collaborator: Matt Snyder(UX designer)
Methods & Tools: Sketching, wireframing, prototyping, testing, Tableau, Excel, Wordle, Illustrator
Timeline: Feb.2011 - May. 2011
