So, let's discuss Findings versus Reports. These days it's really important to make sure that you are right sizing your deliverables, to ensure that people actually, take them in, read them, use them, and leverage the recommendations that you have found for them. So, meaningful findings are the result of solid planning. Essentially, what that means is, you have to have a good sense of what it is you expect to find, what it is that you expect to learn, what it is that you would like to show people, so that you can create a series of studies or a study that will help you to provide insight into the experiences and products, and questions that you want to learn more about. Typically, we do research to improve an experience or a product, to help to solve problems, to identify the questions that need answers, or to find an area that you need to focus on so that you can learn what it is that you need to do in order to do, more discovery, more research to resolve a problem. At base, your questions really needs to be; clear, ethical, significant, things that matter to the people that you want to talk to because, if they don't matter, they're not going to pay attention. So, when you are designing a study what you need to be thinking about is, how are you going to share those findings at the end? So, you're going to start at the very end and work your way backwards, and then you also need to do some beginning at the beginning and ending at the end as well, because obviously, you're going to be doing this in a linear fashion. So, a few things to think about, you're going to need to define your goals and audience. You're going to need to be able to translate those goals into research questions, and then select the methods that best help you to answer those research questions. Obviously, there's going to be a moment where you're going have to decide what your schedule and budget are going to be. That means that you might need to do a little bit of working backwards and forwards here in order to choose the method that fits your schedule and budget. As well, potentially even steps so far back as to say,"What is the scale of the research question that we can answer given the schedule and budget that we have?" You're going to need to design this study, you're going to need to obviously execute the study. Then afterwards, the review and interpretation of data is critical. You're going to be collecting a lot of data, and you can't represent it all in the report. So, you need to be selective, but you also need to make sure that you're covering in a robust way, all of the information that you collected during that study, that is relevant to helping you answer the research questions. So, you want to be selective about, what it is you decide to surface in your reports, and as well, make sure that aligns with the research questions that you set expectations with your stakeholders, that you are going to answer. Whatever data it is that you need to look at, you need to get a sense of what's there, so that you can work from the bottom up to interpret what's there, and then report out on it, and then share those findings. Great research has a number of dependencies. The first of which is, you have to actually be able to find the information, or current or potential users to actually do research with. If they're not accessible, you're obviously not going to be able to do the research. So, that sometimes means that you will have to find stand-ins or you're going to have to satisfys in order to find people who will satisfy at least minimal requirements of those who would potentially be using your system. So, a product or experience that your research needs to be interactive, important or compelling, or something that needs to be improved or better understood. That is, typically if something is the best that it can be, what do you need to understand about it? Well, in that case you might want to understand, what can we do to won up it? Or are there any opportunities for us to improve it? So, you have to be thinking in a creative way about what it is you want to understand about your product or experience, and what is going to make telling that story exciting or compelling for the stakeholders that need to know more about that product. Most people don't read reports. Actually, these days most people aren't reading anything. Or, if they are reading anything, it's very brief. So, you have to be planning not to be creating reports much of the time, but for potentially writing emails, collecting videos, and making a highlight reel, or even collecting a few quotes, a picture, and a couple of findings together, so that people get a sense of, what it is that you learned, without having to wade through 40 pages of reports. There is a hierarchy of how is it you might think about sharing information. So, you can do everything, and this is the most compelling way to help tell the story, from having stakeholders actually attend studies, and participate in analyzing and interpreting data. There's nothing more compelling than actually having a developer or a designer watch a user struggle with an experience and have them understand, "Oh! This is what I need to do to fix that experience." The next thing you can do at a level of remove is, to create videos that show critical moments that really highlight those key findings that are most important to you and your stakeholders. The next best thing is to provide at least bullet points. So, typically bullet point findings are shared in the form of email, and that enables people to very quickly get findings out to a large and potentially disperse audience. The next best thing is an executive summary. So, again, this enables you to put together several types of information, whether that might be findings, charts, links to videos, that essentially give people a little bit broader sense of what happened during the study, or what the findings were within the study, but doesn't force them to again sit and read a very long report. Then finally, in the case where you really are needing to create an extensive report, then you want to do some combination of all of these things actually, optimally, all the way from having stakeholders play a key role in analyzing and interpreting data, all the way to having a robust executive summary that helps to set the stage for a report that gives you a deep dive analysis of all of the findings, and even a deeper dive sometimes of the data that you've collected. So, some really great ways to make sure that your findings are going to resonate is to know who your audience is. A lot of the time, it's really hard to walk into a room, and say, "Your baby is hideous." So, instead, what you want to do is start out with some of the. So, these are some of the things that went well, and here's some areas of opportunity for improvement. Another thing to think about is, your findings needs to respect project and development timelines. Essentially what that means is, if you're only going to be able to deliver findings after a development deadline, they're not going to be useful. So, sometimes that's going to mean that you're going to have to get very aggressive about either your methodology, your scheduling, or how it is that you share findings that people get them in a timely manner. So, you want to ensure that your answers align with the audience's goals and concerns. So, essentially what that means is, you need to answer the questions that they have. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't answer questions that might come up during the research. So, for example, there might be some surprises that come up and that might be an opportunity for you to go above and beyond and share with them ideas and insights that go beyond what it is that they actually asked you to learn. Some of the best 'aha' moments come from those surprises that come out of the research that you're doing. Typically, time on task, task success, and other key metrics that you identify are important to your project should be captured in a way that boils up those findings that people don't have to read a long report in order to figure out what's going on. So, charts, graphs where possible, quotes, clips, videos where possible, are all different ways that you can help people to understand what happened. Charts sometimes are the best way to tell that story too. Because, just having those numbers in front of you can help you to see what are there trends, understand what's sticking out, and get a good sense for, what that average actually looks like from a numeric perspective and underlying data perspective. So, a great executive summary looks short. You don't want to densely pack and executive summary with a lot of text. Think about putting data, charts, findings, quotes, recommendations, pictures, links to videos here. Because it really is about saying, here is some important information that you need to know about, you don't have to spend hours and hours to learn about it, but if you want to learn more, there's more that is beyond this executive summary. In summary, it's important to ensure that your findings are not just a data dump, they really are findings that bring some value and some insight into a whole lot of data, that could be confusing or unstructured. That enables you to share recommendations, and defines some next steps that are meaningful for your stakeholders.
