Most consulting work results in a combination of services listed below but doesn’t necessarily have to be:

• User-research
• Human factors
• Ethnographic research
• Ergonomics/ anthropometrics
• User experience
• Out of the Box experience/ user-guides
• Advisory role/ design reviews on concepts or prototypes
• Brainstorming and design recommendations
• Usability studies
• Implementing human factors program and/ or facility for usability studies in Clients’ organization

 Process

After an initial introduction to the project goals and existing background work, a proposal and a study plan are submitted to the Client.

If the project is in its early stages of development, in-context user-research is strongly recommended to allow the team to ground their work in real stories and produce concepts that are rooted in their customers’ lifestyle. Elements such as people’s personal organization strategies, their cherished items, their workarounds, the re-purposing of certain belongings all draw a picture that is rich in unique insights and potential design solutions.

In later stages of the development process, during user evaluation and user testing, participants from the target market interact with the product, interface, packaging, that is being designed. These can be early models, paper prototypes, initial user-guides, functional prototypes or production units. User evaluation of a communications device may be more relevant when performed in a car whereas user testing such as eye-tracking of a website should take place in a usability lab.

After the study Transitions Research analyzes the research materials, compiles the relevant insights and prepares a presentation for the team. Additional presentations to extended teams may be requested as well as a printed report.

Timeline

Planning, running the research, analyzing the data and producing a presentation may take 3-6 weeks depending on the size of the user group and their availability as well as the number of design solutions in the study (a maximum of 3 at a time is suggested).

Beyond the research

User-research is too often a box to check off the ‘to-do’ list. Only as an inherent part of the design process can it fully play its role of informing the design process. Staying involved slightly beyond the strict boundaries of the research, such as in parallel / post-research brainstorms or design refinements, ensures continuity of the users’ voice up until the pre-production stage.