People often ask me why it's so much easier to find cautionary tales of companies that didn't do their research rather than good case studies.
#1 Shockingly few businesses do useful qualitative research.
#1 Shockingly few businesses do useful qualitative research.
#2 If successful research happens that informs product decisions and leads to more successful products, it usually gets filed under hindsight bias or trade secrets.
#3 There is no one path to learning. Insights can come from all sorts of formal and informal activities if you are asking good questions. (And, as in journalism, not all investigations bear fruit but that doesn't mean you stop investigating.)
#4 "Sometimes good research helps kill off bad ideas. There are very few organizations confident enough to publicize how excited they got about an idea that research discredited."—@egoodman
(And of course, a leading reason why people with authority block research is that they are secretly afraid it will discredit ideas they are excited about.)
So, if you're trying to get authorization to do more research and the people in charge ask for case studies, now you know why that is a red herring.
No one spending $50k or even $20k on a new car would pick one without plenty of qualitative research, so it's strange that those same people would eschew research before investing millions of their company's or investors' money in an idea.
If there is time and money to design and build something, then there is time and money to gather the information you need to make confident decisions.
Otherwise you aren't designing, you're just gambling.
Otherwise you aren't designing, you're just gambling.
And too often if product or business leaders are willing to do research it has to be some centrifugal bumble-puppy like Foresee or focus groups or eye tracking.
"Spend time around people and talk to them" doesn't require satisfying complicated apparatus.
"Spend time around people and talk to them" doesn't require satisfying complicated apparatus.
