Synthesizing User Research
After you collected interview notes, competitor information and your research material, you need to define and synthesize the findings you gained.
Our data means nothing if we don’t assign any meaning to the data we were able to gather. We need to analyze and interpret the data in multiple ways. At this stage, we want to discover all the insights we can from the data even if they are just “hunches.”
We don’t want to just report facts, we want to understand our data. We try to build hypotheses around the core insights or what we believe to be the truths of our research.
Part of the process may require pruning and filtering data to generate insights. Sometimes we may have to rely on our gut feeling when we examine our data and its patterns. To a certain degree, after we spent hours talking to our users and observing them, we can understand them to an extent. So what we do will usually look like this (but it can always vary):
- We will gather all the information and data we have from our interviews and research material.
- Identify exactly what we see. Not defining it yet.
- Sort the information into the most suitable way for our project.
- Define the insights and analyze our material.
Don’t underestimate the power of organizational skills when collecting all the data. You want to include all the recordings, notes, files together and analyze and identify all that is essential to your findings. Figure out the best organizational system for you and your team, because this will make it easier to look at data and hopefully find something that you might have overlooked.
Once you have organized the content, look through the data and try to identify anything of use. Collect any important points that your users have brought up, whether they are in the form of quotations or not. You can collect these into color coded post-it notes and place them on a board for your entire team to synthesize the information. Now you can use sorting methods that allow you to group or separate the data into the most useful structure for your session.
Once you’ve grouped the content into sections, it should be easier to identify insights now that they are visually laid out in groups. Now that you are able to see the patterns, you can discuss them with the team and see what other insights your team can come up with together that was not yet brought up.
This will push your designs forward because you will have a deeper understanding of what is needed, what impacts the product, and how you and your team can truly create useful products.
