How To Run The Right Kind Of Research Study With The Double-Diamond Model

Product and design teams make a lot of decisions. Early on in the development of a product, they will be thinking about features — such as what the product should do, and how each feature should work. Later on, those decisions become more nuanced — such as ‘what should this button say? Each decision introduces an element of risk — if a bad decision is made, it will reduce the chance for the product to be successful.
The people making these decisions rely on a variety of information sources to improve the quality of their decision This includes intuition, an understanding of the market, as well as an understanding of user behavior. Of these, the most valuable source of information to put evidence behind decisions is understanding our users.
Being armed with an understanding of the appropriate user research methods can be very valuable when developing new products. This article will cover some appropriate methods and advice on when to deploy them.

A Process For Developing Successful Products

The double diamond is a model created by the UK’s Design Council which describes a process for making successful products. It describes taking time to understand a domain, picking the right problem to solve, and then exploring potential ideas in that space. This should prove that the product is solving real problems for users and that the implementation of the product works for users.

To succeed at each stage of the process requires understanding some information about your users. Some of the information we might want to understand from users when going through the process

Each stage has some user research methods that are best suited to uncovering that information. In this article, we’ll refer to the double diamond to highlight the appropriate research method throughout product development.