Jax Wechsler

Ponderings on design research data

I was having a chat with my lead designer at work today.
We recently conducted some user testing with sample users testing three alternative look and feels for a new web service we are building for a client.
These tests were done online via a questionnaire.

Whilst we constructed a report of this data for the client, I gave both the report as well as the raw data to the designer for her review.

In reviewing some amendments of the design today it was extremely interesting to here the designer refer to statements made by users (I hate that word!) with-in the testing data.
She verbatim quoted data from the tests when explaining her design rationale.

We talked a bit about this and she said that she was really excited to be given the raw data as it really informed her understanding of the research significantly more effectively than did the report/research analysis.

Just a note about this…..more fuel for my thinking about design and design research…..and feeding designers design knowledge.