User-centred Design Research

User-centred Design Research is all about deep user empathy. We aim to know your users better to discover the unmet needs that will make the products we design for you intrinsically more desirable.

User-centred design research combines multiple research techniques, all filtered through a user’s perspective to achieve a product or experience solution. Typical research techniques include user observations, market landscapes, benchmark product teardowns, and product or experience journey maps. This research is usually performed by designers who can then directly see and solve gaps between user needs and possible solutions.

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User-centred design is a core element of Cobalt’s design process. It’s the raw data that powers real innovation and products which rise beyond good to be desirable. Understanding users’ needs are most effective by experts whose fresh eyes can see more clearly. We acknowledge and draw upon our client’s deeper technical knowledge and their customers’ demographics; however, our independent viewpoint is often better able to see user problems and opportunities with much more clarity.

We place an emphasised focus on users during every stage of the design process. Designated user-centred design research enables the project team, and yourself as a client, to elevate our level of understanding of the target audience that the design outcome is intended for. This allows a greater level of personalisation, and refinement to be instilled in the design from the beginning, generating more memorable user experiences.

Usability Engineering

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METHODS

User Insights

Market Landscapes

Product Teardowns

Journey Maps

There are many elements of building an accurate, 3-dimensional understanding of users. Some, like market statistics, or customer profiles can be collected by our clients or specialty researchers. For design projects, our gold standard is observation or ethnographic research. Using products is often subconscious, so we need to see what, how and why they do, not what they might say in a traditional research approach. Together, demographic and ethnographic research, combined with our broader social and technical knowledge, can reveal a powerful image of users’ needs – met, unmet and future.

We look at the market from a design viewpoint; cross-referenced with our client’s current and intended positioning. Typically we chart critical attributes on axes, and map competitors on these to jointly identify where we want the client’s product to sit.

Coming up to speed quickly and efficiently is something we know a lot about. Benchmarking exemplars firstly in use and then through disassembly is an important way of establishing a base from which to exceed.

Benchmark products can be direct competitors, but not necessarily. Where the technology is new, competitors may not exist. That said, there are always benchmarks, as there will be precedents within particular functions. In these cases, we will reference products with similar controls/displays, ergonomics, assembly etc to the product we are designing. Cobalt keeps a collection of hundreds of notable products which we use as references.

Anyone familiar with digital design will be familiar with journey maps; a kind of flowchart showing how people navigate a digital process. However, any experience with any product is a journey, and researching these can uncover and document pain points, areas of delight and opportunities for improvement. This is especially true of simplifying repetitive actions or troubleshooting elements that developers themselves miss as they have become too engrossed in the process to see the flaws only too obvious to new users.

WHAT IS IT? Knowledge about users by designers for design

WHAT COBALT CAN DO We see your user’s experience with independent clarity

User Insights

Market Landscapes

Product Teardowns

Journey Maps