What is this?

This session is part of a learning curriculum that I designed to incrementally skill up and empower a team of Designers and Researchers whose skillset and ways of working needed to evolve to keep up with changes in the way we think about and execute design.

Each session in the curriculum aims to simplify the complexities of human-centered interaction design using real-life examples from my own professional experience alongside established theory from industry experts.

The sessions are intentionally structured as short, achievable hands-on learning workshops that balance technique (hands-on, doing) with theory (readout, presentation).

**For more info about this curriculum, please read: **👇👇🏼👇🏾

_Why am I sharing this? _I have open-sourced this content to help others understand the fundamentals of human-centered interaction design and the multi-dimensional skillset needed to be successful in complex, collaborative environments.

What is the focus of this session?

Context — An understanding of how to approach the work

_Craft _— An understanding of how to do the work

_Communication _— An understanding of how to interact and collaborate

What are the goals of this session?

This session provides participants with an introduction to User Research and what it takes to get started — including an understanding of what user research is (and isn’t), where it fits into the product development process, when it should (and shouldn’t) be used, and an overview of common methodologies and tools.

Additionally, it provides a step-by-step framework and techniques for planning and executing effective user research activities, individually, or within an organization.

The participatory exercises in this session help attendees apply the concepts presented to a project they are working on (or have worked on in the past). Each exercise is incremental, building upon the previous one, to help participants understand how the principles of user research can be applied to the design challenges they face in their day-to-day.

Why is this topic important?

User insights are a fundamental element of human-centered design and help to facilitate impactful product design and development.

If a product or design solution is not rooted in an understanding of user needs and behavior, it does not account for how real people will interact with it, and its chance of delivering value and impact are relegated to luck.

User insights are fundamental to the product design and development process — they help us understand a problem, before we try to solve it.

#user-experience-research #interaction-design #ux-research #ux #user-research #design