Communicating user research in order to drive design and product decisions
Karen Holtzblatt, Shoshana Holtzblatt · 2014
As the industry evolved from engineering-centered design to user-centered design, organizations created new roles. These user experience (UX) roles are charged with conducting user studies, synthesizing data collected, and communicating findings to product managers, engineers, and UI designers. While it's generally accepted that user research should be performed, the challenge now is for UX professionals to represent and communicate what we find in ways that are valued and consumable by product teams. How can we get what we know into stakeholders' minds so it drives their design thinking? How can we make it compelling so they think about the user data when they are designing? How can we represent the data so that it facilitates ideation? This SIG creates a forum for people with real-world experience and challenges to discuss their best practices-and missteps-for communicating user research. It does not cover the "how to" details for gathering it.