Design & Research Ops
Photo by freddie marriage
At Schoology we work as generalists. Each designer is responsible for exploratory research, concept testing, usability testing and design. There was no process around research which made our jobs even more challenging. I set out to answer:
What do designers need in order to conduct research and design quickly and effectively?
I started to take note of what processes could be streamlined and created resources over the course of a year.
Research Resources
User Research Repository
I used Airtable to create this repository. One tab is for keeping track of the contact information of users we have spoken to as well as the last time we spoke with them. The other tab is for tracking research projects - what themes came up, what research assets were used, where are the notes and recordings and who we speak with.
Research Checklist
Not all designers were comfortable with research. I started to very specifically document some best practices of the steps to set up, run, and synthesize research studies.
Research Question Bank
We asked some questions over and over since our user group was so defined as teachers, administrators and parents. I started to document some common questions we ask in both moderated and unmoderated studies.