Leave Your Own Beliefs Behind

In Dan Saffer’s book, Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices, he interviews well-known researcher and speaker Brenda Laurel, PhD. He asked her what designers should look for when doing research. Her answer emphasizes the importance of shedding assumptions and precepts before asking research questions.

“The first step is to deliberately identify one’s own biases and beliefs about the subject of study and to ‘hang them at the door’ so as to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies. One must then frame the research question and carefully identify the audiences, contexts, and research methods that are most likely to yield actionable results. Those last two words are the most important: actionable results. Often, the success of a research program hangs upon how the question is framed: ‘why don’t girls play computer games?’ vs. ‘how does play vary by gender?’”
Indi Young


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