Summary

A research insight is anything that you've learned from doing user or field research that you feel is actually useful for your project and doesn't trigger the reaction "so what?!".

But not all insights are equal and I like to to separate them in research reports to create clarity for decision makers.

I often use two categorizations:

1. Validated vs inspiring: where validated insights are things that I heard often and are inspiring, and where inspiring insights are things that are wildly and strongly emotional, disruptive or inspiring but haven't been expressed by many.

2. Simple vs Complex: where I separate insights that are simple answers (like a "yes or no") to simple questions and complex answers to complex questions (like a "it depends on this, and that...").

Video transcript

This transcript was generated using Descript. So it might contain some creative mistakes.

What is an insight?

What we call an insight in service design is: Something that we learned from doing research that is useful.

Because yes, when you do a lot of user research, field research, you learn a lot of stuff that, in fact, is not so interesting.

So in my book, the difference between a fact and an insight is that for many facts, you'll say, interesting, but what can I do with it?

On the other side, an insight gives you this reaction of, oh, that's actually inspiring. Because An insight is a fact turned into actionable learning.

But even there, not all insights are equal.

Validated vs inspiring

I often try to share two types of research insights in my own work:

1. Validated insights.

2. Inspiring insights.

Validated insights

Validated insights are things that I've heard plenty of times from either different people or through different research techniques.

You know, that's the thing that research academics and nerds call triangulation. Basically hearing the same idea from different sources or using different methods to get to the same idea.

So a validated insight is something that is inspiring and that you know is true for many.

Inspiring insights

Inspiring insights have another quality. They are weirdly inspiring. They have an emotional touch or can be very disruptive.

But these aren't validated.

This means you haven't heard a ton about it, but it was so inspiring that you had to add it in your research report.

That's the kind of inspiration that comes from extreme users. You know, the super fans of your service that use it at 110%.

And often there are some very brilliant ideas into that type of madness.

In my own work, when I do research projects, it's important to me to separate these different types of insights so that the decision makers and the teammates that read the report know what is a pure fact, what is something that is rather here to create some inspiration and to help generate new and maybe crazy ideas.

Simple versus complex

In other such service design questions and answers, I've already shared other type of insights.

One other categorization that I often use is simple questions with simple answers, and complex questions with complex answers.

In this insights categorization, I separate the questions that can be answered with a yes or no answer. And the questions that can't be answered with a yes or no, but need a bit more context.

And therefore are also open to a bit more debate.

Separate the tips of insights

What this all shows is that not all insights are the same, and that it can be very smart for you in your research reports to come up with a kind of a general categorization.

And depending on the project, you might use one categorization or the other.