Just Enough Research

Good research is about asking more and better questions, and thinking critically about the answers. Done well, it will save your team time and money by reducing unknowns and creating a solid foundation to build the right thing, in the most effective way.

Erika Hall distills her experience into a guidebook of trusted research methods you can implement right away, no matter what size team you’re on or budget you’re working with. Learn how to discover your competitive advantages, spot your own blind spots and biases, understand and harness your findings, and why you should never, ever hold a focus group. You’ll start doing good research faster than you can plan your next pitch.

WHAT’S NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION?

While the mindset and methods of research haven’t changed, our digital climate continues to evolve-from the siren song of Net Promoter Score to the latest social media experiment gone awry. The second edition of Just Enough Research features a brand-new chapter on surveys (chock full of math and centaurs!), as well as updated examples throughout, to continue guiding web professionals on the ethics and effects of research.

While the mindset and methods of research haven’t changed, our digital climate continues to evolve-from the siren song of Net Promoter Score to the latest social media experiment gone awry. The second edition of Just Enough Research features a brand-new chapter on surveys (chock full of math and centaurs!), as well as updated examples throughout, to continue guiding web professionals on the ethics and effects of research.

THIS BOOK EXPLORES:

• Frameworks for designing a thorough research process for your product
• Approaches to gain alignment around shared goals through stakeholder interviews
• How to conduct and build best practices for effective user interviews
• How quickly run affordable tests to clarify big questions
• Essential and methods for gathering and assessing quantitative data

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. What is a Designer?

Chapter 2. Getting Work

Chapter 3. Choosing Who to Sell Your Labor To

Chapter 4. This Is the Chapter About Money

Chapter 5. Working with Contracts

Chapter 6. Getting Paid

Chapter 7. Understanding Your Value

Chapter 8. Working with Others

Chapter 9. Better Workplaces

Review

Chances are good that your business is making inaccurate assumptions about your customers’ behavior. Enough! Erika’s book makes research accessible and helps you create an informed plan to better understand-and design for-your customers.

-LIZ DANZICO

Chair and cofounder, MFA Interaction Design at SVA and VP of design at NPR

As humans interact with each other in more disintermediated ways, digital life, algorithms, and apps shape societies across the globe. Organizations are finally taking the time to understand people’s inner thinking, to think of the consequences, to include those who have been externalized. What?! Your organization isn’t doing that yet?! Then this book will give you the skills to lead your team and your stakeholders into enlightenment.

-INDI YOUNG

Author of Mental Models and Practical Empathy

The relationship between design and research is one of the most misunderstood parts of product design. Erika finally presents a guide to research, in the context of making great interfaces. Bravo.

-NATE BOLT

Founder of Ethnio

About the Author

Erika Hall has been a design consultant since the late twentieth century. She is the cofounder of Mule Design Studio and specializes in helping clients ask the hard questions and work better together to find the answers. Erika speaks and writes about topics that challenge the conventional wisdom of the field to encourage designers to think more deeply about the implications of their work. Her other book is Just Enough Research. She can be found far too often on Twitter as @mulegirl and cohosts the podcast Voice of Design. Erika likes dogs and bicycles.