Professional project
Bridging the gap between designers and researchers at Harman International
Research Ops
Prototyping
Summary
Harman's research team is the key enabler of evidence driven projects. However, currently research reports are not optimised to support designers' process. Our insights have helped transform research and streamlined design processes.
Team
Design Research Director
Associate Director, Strategy
Content writer
Design Researchers
Duration
3 months, ongoing
My Role
Ran interviews, focus groups, conducted benchmarking, created prototypes and derived insights.
project overview
1.
We interviewed
17
designers and researchers
2.
We built and tested
6
prototypes
3.
We successfully helped transform research culture and support design processes
From our research director:
"
We have really taken the results from project BAJAS and completely changed how we approach creating our research reports… All of the researchers are actively trying new things.
PROBLEM CONTEXT
Imagine you're a designer at Harman
You've got a new project, and your client anticipates initial deliverables in two weeks. To guide your design, the research team has conducted research with users and shared a report with you.
Problem is, you don't have enough time to read it
The deadline is urgent and prototyping will take forever. It's a no-brainer. You have to skip the research and start designing.
Problem Validation
Why does this matter?
This is a common state of events in design projects. As a designer myself, I experienced the impact of this: Complex user needs are lost and forgotten, and designers struggle to identify what and why they are designing.
This was an opportunity to strengthen the role of research. So:
How might we make the designer's process easier by streamlining complex research into the process?
The process plan
We started a process of continuous input and adaptation
Benchmarking : Identifying best practices
For starters, Focusing on the user's perspective, talking visually and emotively are key
I benchmarked best practices from research intensive leaders such as Ikea, Google and McKinsey, againts parameters like Information Retention, Empathy, Storytelling, Context-building and Visualisation.
primary research
Both designers and researchers have the same goal: improving users' experiences, so where does it go amiss?
The first step to fixing this misalignment between designers and researchers was understanding their individual processes, and then, streamlining them.
Research to design funnel
Designers struggle to bridge research insights and design
This is how designers process the research and ready up for designing. We derived some opportunities from these.
focus groups
We built 6 "provotype" solutions for these touchpoints
Given the time restraint of the project, we conducted focus groups and talked to teams from Germany, China, USA and India.
These are two prototypes I made:
The figma comic board:
A single, shared space for designers and researcher to share questions and clarifications through comments.
The users become participants as characters discussing their experiences and frustrations, becoming the center of design.
The Instagram report
Quick thumbnails and bite-sized information clusters allow for easy to find information that doesn't overwhelm designers.
Streamlining research to design
Designers liked being guided with activities that bridged research to design, translating insights into design output and ensuring their design is actually solving problems
A Collaborative Report
Turns out, designers want to talk with researchers, but previous methods(Microsoft Teams) didn't work. Having a single space for research + design co-creation makes work easier, not all over different platforms.
Multi-sensorial and visual
"Speaking designers' language" meant making research experiential, letting the users do the talking and personifying the insights.
what next?
The path towards experiential and interactive research is iterative, and through each experience the research needs to evolve further. More interviews and more feedback are in line to keep making it better.
learnings and thoughts
Designing for disabled users is good for everyone.
One of the users we interviewed is dyslexic, and this helped me consider how they would have experienced the frustrations tenfold, and accounting for them would ease the experience for others too.
I love listening to people
This project helped me realise how much I enjoy learning from others. During each interview and focus group I was dazzled by how different each person can be and how much they have to share.
We had a great mentor
Our mentor, the research director's passion for research was contagious, and I was always excited for the next step of the project.
