User Research Can Create Roadmap for Design

When starting a project, design options seem endless while timelines and budgets are often tight. How do you know which opportunity areas are most impactful or should be addressed first? By leveraging user research, an informed development roadmap can be created. Define goals and objectives – This seems obvious, but stakeholders and development project teams must communicate goals and objectives clearly and define their focus: is the goal to increase market share, reduce production cost, reduce support costs, etc.? Outlining these objectives at the project start and referring to them often will help establish the scope and give development teams criteria to assist in evaluating user needs. Build from good end user data - Market research is valuable to understand high-level insights but doesn’t provide a complete picture of user needs. Contextual research is integral to understand both explicit and implicit user needs. Although in-depth interviews provide valuable data, you may miss important user needs without contextual research. For example, a surgeon may state the attributes they need for a new product but not mention that they must step over stretched power cables from existing equipment during the intended product use. Focusing on a specific product is only one part of a workflow; systemic issues may play a critical role in meeting development objectives. Join us at the BIOMEDevice Boston Expo,  April 18–19, 2018. Use promo code "MDDI" for 20% off conference regis...
Source: MDDI - Category: Medical Devices Tags: Design Source Type: news