If we answer what’s asked, we only answer known unknowns. Our value comes from excavating deeper.
Always design a thing by considering it in its next larger context — a chair in a room, a room, in a house, a house in an environment, an environment in a city plan.—Eliel Saarinen
Daniel Kahneman described the bias of omitting critical context as “What you see is all there is.” This is what happens when we accept the provided information at face value without probing for context, verifying for accuracy, or questioning what might be missing.
Something I stress to my teams is that the questions asked of us as researchers are often tightly scoped to what’s top of mind for our cross-functional partners and stakeholders. Sure, answering these questions at face value will help us with today’s decisions and will likely earn us positive peer reviews, but at enormous opportunity cost. We instead should provide helpful answers while also illuminating the next larger context. This is how research findings shift from disposable to durable.
For example, a popular men’s magazine I worked with, in addition to publishing political opinions and fashion advice, also offers entertainment content like movie, television, book, and podcast reviews. When thinking about redesigning the entertainment section, the face value questions touched on:
- How do people navigate entertainment content?
- How can we promote additional content that our site visitors might be interested in?
These questions lend themselves to rapid research—we could easily proceed with an iterative build —> measure —> learn approach and back into a new entertainment section design and article promotion method. But what would we really gain? We didn’t have previous research into entertainment content, so we’d never be able to contextualize the new findings.
Instead, we broadened our approach to better understand where entertainment reviews fit into a larger information ecosystem. Some of our (many) questions included:
- How do people decide what to watch or listen to?
- What’s the last thing they watched or listened to?
- How did it get on their radar?
- What resources do people rely on?
- How does a resource become trusted?
- How does a resource become a habit?
- What media do people prefer for recommendations? (Website, SMS, newsletters…?)
By combining the macro and micro questions, we were able to learn where entertainment content fits into a media diet, how trust is established, and how people prefer to consume entertainment news and reviews. And we were able to prototype a new entertainment experience while also illuminating additional pathways to connect people to content they find valuable.
This is how we ensure our research is durable. By providing additional context into attitudes and behaviors, we contribute to a more cohesive understanding of our users and limit the unknown unknowns. Your colleagues might not have asked for it, but they will certainly appreciate it now and in the future.
