Comm Design Workshop: Communicating Research

Instructor

Kim Erwin

Tell a story (keep it short)
Apply systems thinking (make it fast)
Build a framework (help me feel the data)
Present it from the user's point of view (keep it client-centered)

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Our model for communicating research is both mired in orthodoxy and challenged by real-world practice. Basic presentation practices that worked ten years ago often fall short in the current business climate. Ten years ago, focus groups dominated and ethnographic research was still a ten-dollar word. Our communication practices reflected that.

Ten years later, it's clear that user research has won. This is good news: no longer do clients squint at the term or question its effectiveness. The tougher side of this now mass-market product is that user research is subject to the same economic and productivity pressures that traditional market research learned to deliver against.

But that’s not all. A second force complicating our communication challenge is the shift in our collective information environment. The internet, among other elements in our daily information network, has permanently altered the frame of our experience and reshaped our expectations about how long it ought to take to learn about just about anything. The way all of us--clients included--collect, review and compile information to make decisions is different than even five years ago. So why do we continue to produce long, complicated, linear presentations for clients when we no longer use information that way ourselves?

In light of all this change, it seems timely and important to rethink our output. And to challenge current communication practices: the linear presentation of data, bulk knowledge-transfer experiences, evidence-driven communication objectives and bullet-pointed distillations.

Course objectives
The objective is develop a kit of research presentation techniques that are as ready for client uptake as they are representative of user needs. To get practice at this kind of thinking, we will

… analyze and synthesize an existing consumer data set for findings with the help of guest researcher Diane Fraley, who has pioneered online qualitative research methods.

… use this data set and findings to create new ways to communicate user research at three critical points: fresh from the field, at the 'big presentation' and at the point of handoff.

… survey current research reporting techniques—frameworks, collections, narratives, lists, ‘care abouts,’ etc. We will consider which are worth keeping and where in the lifestage of the project they best fit.

… build new formats that we might add to our toolkit: wikis, blogs, interactive pieces, ‘for dummies’ guides, DK guides, posters.

Format & Grading

The class is hands-on studio, group dialog and group critique, punctuated by experiences and lectures intended to open up thinking or reintroduce classic theory to ground our efforts.

This class is open to all ID students. But it is a comm design class: students must be ready to visually and verbally execute research presentation in multiple formats, and these presentations will be the source for grades.