CMD METHODS PACK

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CMD Methods Pack

This pack supports your design research planning in any CMD project. Browse through the cards to find methods that suit your needs. Pick a combination of methods belonging to different research strategies to balance your research plan. You can use this card set in many ways. It is really up to you!

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Library

Goal

Standing on the shoulders of giants

To ensure rigor in your design explore what is already done. Watch what competitors are doing or get an overview of existing guidelines, patterns and theories. Sometimes called deskresearch.

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Benchmark creation

Benchmark creation

Why?

Existing products in your niche can be a valuable reference and source of inspiration.

inspiration data
expertise fit
overview certainty
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Best, good & bad practices

Best, good & bad practices

Why?

Why invent the wheel again? Incorporating what others have learned is an important practice.

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Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis

Why?

Find a niche or unique selling point competitors are not filling.

inspiration data
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Expert Interview

Expert Interview

Why?

A domain or content expert can put you on track when you enter a new domain or field of expertise. The expert can point out sources, give you a sense of direction or point to common pitfalls.

inspiration data
expertise fit
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Literature Study

Literature Study

Why?

Find contextual information, guidance and best practices.

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expertise fit
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Trend analysis

Trend analysis

Why?

Catch up with novel developments before your competitors do.

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Field

Goal

Understand your users

Explore the application context. You apply a field strategy to get an overview of your users, know their needs, desires and limitations so your design is relevant to them.

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Card sorting

Card sorting

Why?

Find out what information organisation structures are considered intuitive by users.

inspiration data
expertise fit
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Diaries & probes

Diaries & probes

Why?

Collect detailed information and inspiration about values, thoughts, routines, and long-term experience of your intended users.

inspiration data
expertise fit
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Focus group

Focus group

Why?

When the topic asks for it, or for efficiency reasons, opinions and experiences can also be gathered through group discussions called focus groups.

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Interview

Interview

Why?

It is hard to design for users you do not fully understand. Interviews allow you to understand users better by gathering their opinions, behaviours, goals, attitudes and experiences.

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Observation

Observation

Why?

Get a feeling for how your intended users will use your product by unobtrusively observing them and their behaviour in their daily environment.

inspiration data
expertise fit
overview certainty
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Survey

Survey

Why?

Collect, mostly quantitative, information from a large sample of your target group.

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Lab

Goal

To measure is to know

Be certain your solution works and is relevant for the end-user. Will your design work out the way you intended it to?

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A/B Testing

A/B Testing

Why?

A minor change in a design may alter user behaviour in ways that are hard to detect in a usability test. An A/B test allows you to compare real-world user behaviour across different versions of the product.

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Biometrics

Biometrics

Why?

To get objective data about users' attention and physical state.

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Field Trial

Field Trial

Why?

Participants never act completely naturally in a lab setting, so consider testing your product in the 'wild'. This can be particularly valuable when real-life disturbances are important for your design, as is the case with mobile apps.

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Online analytics

Online analytics

Why?

Gain insights from real usage statistics in order to continue improving a website, app or social media campaign after it is in use, or monitor it's use for marketing purposes.

inspiration data
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Security test

Security test

Why?

Connected products and online services are prone to misuse by rogue users. Security tests identify weaknesses of the system and thus help prevent misuse.

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Thinking aloud

Thinking aloud

Why?

Understand the reasons behind user behaviour, or uncover the mental models of the user in a usability test.

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Usability Testing

Usability Testing

Why?

Detect problems users have with your design and correct these before the product goes live.

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Wizard of Oz

Wizard of Oz

Why?

A Wizard of Oz: acting out the systems functionality, can help when a system has not been build yet, but a realistic user test is necessary to drive design.

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Showroom

Goal

Know & show your contribution

Be certain your ideas are better than what is already done. Proof the rigor of your design by showing it to experts, test against guidelines or decide on its USPs.

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Co-reflection

Co-reflection

Why?

Involve stakeholders and other experts early in the design process in order to set an innovative direction and to create openness for novel ideas among stakeholders.

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Ethical check

Ethical check

Why?

Norms and values differ between people and societies. Make sure your design and development decisions do not lead to conflicts with certain norms and values.

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Expo

Expo

Why?

By placing your work in the spotlight, you learn about its value for others in ways you might not expect yourself.

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Guideline conformity analysis

Guideline conformity analysis

Why?

Conforming to guidelines and standards helps ensure the credibility of the quality of your product and prevents reliability, privacy and security issues.

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Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic Evaluation

Why?

Complementary to user research, or when user research is too costly, a heuristic evaluation can be used to detect and repair usability errors.

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Peer Review

Peer Review

Why?

“With many eye-balls on the code, all bugs are shallow.” Colleagues and experts can help position and improve your work, certainly if it needs to be reused by them.

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Pitch

Pitch

Why?

Get a grasp on your unique selling points and practice concise communication about them.

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Provocative Prototyping

Provocative Prototyping

Why?

Friendly provocation can help uncover hidden values and requirements from your stakeholders.

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(Product) Quality Review

(Product) Quality Review

Why?

Ensure the product is perfect before it is released to the client or users.

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USP (Unique Selling Points)

USP (Unique Selling Points)

Why?

In a competitive business situation you need to be able to identify and communicate clearly and concisely what it is that sets you apart.

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Workshop

Goal

Seek variation and improvement!

Explore opportunities. Prototyping, sketching and co-creation activities are all ways to innovate and to gain insights in what is possible and how things could work.

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Co-creation

Co-creation

Why?

Gain inspiration from your users by involving them in the design process. It may lead to unexpected and sensible project outcomes.

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Ideation

Ideation

Why?

Generate and develop new ideas.

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Morphological chart

Morphological chart

Why?

Generating ideas in a systematic manner.

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Proof of Concept

Proof of Concept

Why?

Demonstrate the desirability or the feasibility of your idea or design.

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Prototyping

Prototyping

Why?

Develop, evaluate or communicate a concept or design.

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Scamper

Scamper

Why?

When it is hard to develop an initial idea into an elegant solution, a morphological technique such as scamper can help.

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Sketching

Sketching

Why?

Explore and communicate forms and ideas.

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Storytelling

Storytelling

Why?

Make abstract concepts concrete and strengthen the empathy for the user in your team by using storytelling.

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Tinkering

Tinkering

Why?

Come up with novel idea's based on technical opportunities and affordances.

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Stepping Stones

Goal

Condense, communicate, combine

Condense your insights into tangible representations that can be re-used in the rest of the project and help to communicate findings to the team and client.

research strategy stepping-stones
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Business Model Canvas

Business Model Canvas

Why?

Dream up in a structured and visual way, how a new company can reach its customers and make revenues in order to understand, discuss, create and analyse a business idea.

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Comparison Chart

Comparison Chart

Why?

A comparison chart, or comparison table, describes and compares attributes and characteristics of existing products or tools in order to determine the best option for your project.

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Concept

Concept

Why?

When you develop a new product or service, the concept summarizes 'the big idea' or 'the main principle' on which your solution will be based. For example, most traditional churches have a floor plan based on a cross so God can recognize a church from the sky. Validate your concept(s) with stakeholders to determine desirability and feasibility.

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Customer Journey

Customer Journey

Why?

Visualize the user experience of a service over time and across the different interaction moments (touch points) within the service.

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Design Specification

Design Specification

Why?

Describe the characteristics of a product, like a website or an application, in order to inform the designers and developers who are involved.

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Empathy Map

Empathy Map

Why?

Summarize and synthetize findings from observations and interviews in a structured way. Empathy maps can offer valuable and unexpected insights in the user.

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Inspiration Wall

Inspiration Wall

Why?

Save and organize creative ideas during a project, or even permanently, in order to have access to them very quickly and let ideas 'simmer' for a while.

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Mood Board

Mood Board

Why?

Before you start to make a design, a mood board can help describe the 'mood' or the 'feel' of the envisioned product.

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Persona

Persona

Why?

Represent the user in discussions about the design in an elegant way.

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Requirements list

Requirements list

Why?

To ensure your design meets all demands, a complete list of requirements can serve as a planning tool and checklist.

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Scenario

Scenario

Why?

Different types of scenarios exist that each serve a different purpose, for example to develop user criteria, to generate ideas or to reflect on a concept. Storyboards are a particularly common form to capture scenarios.

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Task Analysis

Task Analysis

Why?

When your product has to support people performing some kind of task (for example repairing a car), a task analysis will help you and other designers understand the task better.

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