Real World Discovery Research

What happens when there is no budget for discovery research, or no researcher? Or when discovery amounts to little more than stakeholder interviews and competitor research?

In this talk from UX Brighton 2018, Emma Boulton points out that lab-based usability testing has become the UX industry’s go-to method, much as focus groups are for market research. Interviews in a lab work well when you have a clearly defined solution to test, but they are less useful for shaping the problem space. Boulton shares real-world examples of discovery research to encourage designers and researchers to get out from behind their computers and into the places where people live and work.

The talk is aimed at anyone doing product discovery who wants research methods that reveal problems worth solving, not just feedback on existing designs.