A recent rant in Interactions Magazine (January - February 2006) asks the question: are you doing 'User Research' or 'Loser Research'? The author is not referring to researching people who are 'losers' but rather researchers who are not doing good work-- 'Loser Researchers'. That article inspired our post below.
Attempting to develop any kind of product without a clear notion of who the users are and what they might do with the product is a very bad idea. Furthermore, even starting other types of consumer research, such as surveys and usability testing before the product opportunity is fully understood, or before personas (i.e. users) and scenarios (i.e. the things they do) are defined is ineffective. Lacking a clear notion of who the users are and what they do, how could one even know what questions to ask or what to test in the usability lab? In science jargon, asking irrelevant or just plain wrong research questions is called 'Type III Error'.
The common practice of conducting usability testing prior to rigorous Discovery Research, such as Field Observation and Depth Interviews, is a principal reason for so much usability testing being a waste of time and money, and this hurts the credibility of Usability Engineering as well as its related professions.
By analogy, conducting a usability test before scenarios are developed is like booking a recording studio before any of the songs are written--very expensive and very little valuable output.
