Would you rather have Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple in your design-team?
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By Dennis Nordstrom in General Published: Monday, 16 February 09 - 03:41 AM (GMT) Last Updated: Thursday, 26 March 09 - 05:33 AM (GMT) |
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Is literature and user research all that different? Here is a short story about an early project I worked on, that shows how the two genres might be closer related than people give them credit for.
During a project I worked on in Denmark, before I moved on to the US and Australia, we struggled a bit with how we could interpret and translate our research-findings into design. We had a multitude of ethnographic-research data, consisting of interviews with respondents as well as participatory design sessions between respondents and design team. However, we were not sure how to interpret all this data into useful insights that would inform our design of relevant products.
After careful considerations we decided that since no obvious design-ideas came to mind, we needed to tell a different story by reframing our research towards design... One of the members of the design-team had a close friend of the family, who was a children's author. She had written over a dozen children books and was well educated within literature. We invited her to come join us for a day and help us with advice on how to reframe our research so as to tell a story directed towards design. She accepted our invitation and about a week later we all met at the corporate brainstorm-room.
We were four all in all and we sat around a round table with all our data as well as paper and pens within reach. The author listened carefully as we presented our design-project as well as our dilemma to her. Once she had gotten the initial introduction to our project, we moved on to present the research and the research-outcome to her. She still listened carefully, and the further we moved through our elaborate explanation of participants, workshops, and ethnographic interviews the deeper the wrinkles on the author's forehead got. Had we lost her? Was she confused by our data? Did she feel as if we were wasting her time? It was hard to say what thoughts went through her head, when the project manager had finished her explanation of our research.
There was a moment of silence in the room where three set of eyes were aimed at the author, and where the author's eyes were aimed at the ceiling. "Ok" she said. "How did you go about arriving at the data you have?" We showed her our affinity diagrams, snippets of our video analysis, user-quotes, card-sorting, and a bunch of other data that was arrived at through participatory design sessions and ethnographic interviews.
Then she said something that I have thought about in every project I have worked on ever since: "So if you looked at this with the eyes of Sherlock Holmes, perhaps you should just try looking at it through the eyes of Miss Marple?" Now, this needed some more explanation. "Well" She said. "Sherlock Holmes is the sort of investigator, who looks carefully at every clue he has through his magnifying glass. Miss Marple on the other hand just sits around the house knitting, and she is always is able to put the pieces of the puzzle together through her wit and her ability to overhear important conversations."
This one sentence was something that opened up a world of research and insights to me. Every time I start analysing research-data i try to choose the appropriate set of "investigation-eyes" inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple. These two super-detectives are each in their own way able to find the core of the problem, and to put together several pieces of the puzzle until they find what they are looking for.
Sherlock Holmes will deduct with logic and a sharp eye for details, while Miss Marple are able to add snippets of information together in order to get the large picture.
Every researcher probably has their way of looking at things. However, whenever I feel stuck I look at it in terms of "Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple". Sometimes small pieces of data confuses me, but then I apply the Miss Marple persona and it actually helps me focus on the big picture again. On the other hand when I have trouble grasping the big picture I apply the Sherlock Holmes persona, and view over the details one by one. Either way it is a process that I find important when it comes to analyzing research-data.
Perhaps the next time you have difficulty making sense of research results you should try to apply either Sherlock Holmes or Miss Marple personas?
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