About face 3.0/4

In particular, qualitative research helps us understand:
 -Behaviors, attitudes, and aptitudes of potential product users
-Technical, business, and environmental contexts — the domain— of the product to be designed
-Vocabulary and other social aspects of the domain in question
-How existing products are used

Qualitative research can also help the progress of design projects by:
-Providing credibility and authority to the design team, because design decisions can be traced to research results
-Uniting the team with a common understanding of domain issues and user concerns
-Empowering management to make more informed decisions about product design issues that would otherwise be based on guesswork or personal preference

It’s our experience that in comparison, qualitative methods tend to be faster, less expensive, and more likely to provide useful answers to important questions that lead to superior design:
-How does the product fit into the broader context of people’s lives?
-What goals motivate people to use the product, and what basic tasks help people
accomplish these goals?
-What experiences do people find compelling? How do these relate to the product
being designed?
-What problems do people encounter with their current ways of doing things?

Qualitative research is a very necessary prior method to get known your users'  opinion to your product.Without this step,there is no chance to get fully understand of the cutting-through point of a digital product.


The type of information that is important to gather from stakeholders includes:
-Preliminary product vision
-Budget and schedule
-Technical constraints and opportunities
-Business drivers 
 -Stakeholders’ perceptions of the user

Some points to consider about using SMEs(subject matter experts) are:

-SMEs are often expert users.
 -SMEs are knowledgeable, but they aren’t designers.
 -SMEs are necessary in complex or specialized domains.
 -You will want access to SMEs throughout the design process

Interviewing customers, you will want to understand:
-Their goals in purchasing the product
-Their frustrations with current solutions
-Their decision process for purchasing a product of the type you’re designing
-Their role in installation, maintenance, and management of the product Domain-related issues and vocabulary

customers sometimes are not the same group of users

Information we are interested in learning from users includes:
-The context of how the product (or analogous system, if no current product exists) fits into their lives or workflow: when, why, and how the product is or will be used
-Domain knowledge from a user perspective: What do users need to know to do their jobs?
-Current tasks and activities: both those the current product is required to accomplish and those it doesn’t support
-Goals and motivations for using their product Mental model: how users think about their jobs and activities, as well as what expectations users have about the product
-Problems and frustrations with current products (or an analogous system if no current product exists)

Perhaps the most effective technique for gathering qualitative user data combines interviewing and observation, allowing the designers to ask clarifying questions and direct inquiries about situations and behaviors they observe in real time.

In parallel with stakeholder interviews, the design team should review any literature pertaining to the product or its domain. This can and should include product marketing plans, brand strategy, market research, user surveys, technology specifications and white papers, business and technical journal articles, competitive studies,Web searches for related and competing products and news, usability study results and metrics, and customer support data such as call center statistics.

The design team, ideally, should engage in an informal heuristic or expert review of both the current and competitive interfaces, comparing each against interaction and visual design principles (such as those found later in this book). This procedure both familiarizes the team with the strengths and limitations of what is currently available to users, and provides a general idea of the current functional scope of the product.

The design hackathon is a very popular and usefull way to inspire the design team.Combining all kinds of information and literature resources with team perspective,the process of the design will be much more effective.