What to do when I'm stuck in analysis paralysis?

What to do when I'm stuck in analysis paralysis?

Here are a few tips I usually give to people who have done so much research that they don't know what to do with it:

  1. Ideate and prototype in 3 hours: Take an hour to list 10 to 50 ideas that come out of what you learned. And then take 2 hours to transform 3 of these ideas into prototypes with just paper, a pen, sticky notes, tape and scissors.

  2. Make progressive summaries: it can be hard to summarise what is the key thing you learned. So try to summarise maybe all that you learned in 50 learnings. Then summarise those in 30, 20, 10, 5, 3, 2 and 1. You get the idea. Then find out what level of summary is the right one.

  3. Write a briefing from a client: Imagine a client comes to you and gives you a problem to solve. Write the email of the client with the problem, the time frame, the budget, etc. This will help you work on the problem where all that you have learned will help.

  4. Imagine the end result: imagine you are 1 year from now. What's the end result of your project? What's the form it takes? Now prototype this today.

  5. Outsource: Ask a friend to join you, share with him all that you have learned and ask him to summarise the one important thing that he took out of what you said. Now work on just this.

Q&A: Research in Service Design

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  • How do I verify that there are enough people with this problem?
  • How to prioritize user research?
  • What are good structures for a prototype?
  • Does research in service design look like research in social sciences or market research?
  • How can I know if I have a good product/service market fit?

Mapping

  • How do you start a competition analysis for a new physical service?
  • What are tricks when creating digital maps with Google Maps for research?

Recruiting and compensation of research participants

  • How much should I pay research participants?
  • What are important elements to put in a screener?
  • Should feedback be free?
  • Should I use family and friends in my prototyping testing sessions?
  • How do you recruit users and testers?
  • What are the different ways to recruit research participants?

Research reports

  • How can you make your research age well?
  • How can I visualise complex ideas with simple forms?
  • What's a good structure for a research report?
  • What are examples of research reports?
  • What information should be included in a design report?
  • ▶️ What is a good structure for a slide that summarises a research report?
  • ▶️ What are different types of research insights?
  • Why do I make websites for some workshop reports?

Synthesizing research

  • ▶️ How to structure the synthesis or insights of user testings?
  • How to analyze interviews or research data?
  • What to do when I'm stuck in analysis paralysis?
  • How can I turn open questions into numbered data?
  • How do I choose the chart type to show my data?
  • ▶️ What do I do with all the research I've made?

Surveys for Service Design

  • How can I combine surveys and interviews?
  • Is a survey a good start for a research project when you don't know much about the group you want to serve?
  • How can I make street or door to door survey less akward?

Note taking during research

  • How do you take notes during user interviews?
  • Where can I find sample interviews to train my note-taking skills?
  • Should I collect more data?

Shadowing for Service Design

  • How can I speed up a shadowing session?
  • What can make or break a shadowing session?
  • What should I do after a shadowing session?