Adopt human-centricity
Putting people at the centre of all our work.
Tools
Research guidelines
Research provides the evidence needed to make informed design decisions.
Scope & Details
Research provides the evidence needed to make informed design decisions. It moves the design process from guesswork to certainty by gathering factual data about user needs, behaviours, and operational realities. These guidelines structure the process of qualitative research, helping teams look beyond surface-level statistics to understand the context of a service experience.
Suggested time
Varies (from 1 day for rapid research to several weeks for in-depth studies)
Level of Difficulty
Beginner – Advanced (depending on scope)
Design Phase
Discover
Prerequisites
Project brief
Materials Needed
Research plan, consent forms, interview guides, notetaking templates, audio recorders, cameras, observation sheets, digital documentation tools
Participants
Design researchers, service designers, product owners, frontline staff, policy leads, and subject-matter experts
How to do it
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Define Your Objective
Clarify what you need to learn and why. Align your research focus with the design challenge — whether to understand user needs, test a prototype, or assess a current service.
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Prepare and Align as a Team
Review the project brief and define roles (interviewer, observer, notetaker). Develop open-ended questions and agree on how findings will be shared.
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Choose the Right Techniques
Select research methods based on time, scope, and audience
Ethnographic interviews: Understand people’s lived experiences and emotional context.
Expert interviews: Gather insight from professionals or specialists with relevant expertise.
Location-based research: Observe how the physical or digital environment influences experience.
User diaries: Collect real-world evidence over time through participant logs or photos.
Literature and data review: Build on existing research, analytics, and policy reports.
Frontline Shadowing: Observe staff delivering the service in real-time to understand operational barriers and the human-to-digital handoff.
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Conduct the Research
Engage with participants openly and respectfully. Listen actively, ask follow-up questions, and observe the environment. If appropriate, take photos (with permission) to document the context.
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Capture and Synthesize Findings
Take detailed notes and capture quotes, behaviors, and emotions. After each session, review insights with your team and cluster them into emerging themes.
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Validate and Triangulate
Compare insights from different research methods to ensure findings are robust and representative. Look for patterns and contradictions — these will help reveal deeper truths.
AI Enhancements
Use the “empathise” QR code to help draft effective interview questions before you go into the field, or to summarise your raw notes afterward to find key themes.
Smart Transcription: Record interviews (with consent) and use AI tools to transcribe and summarize key themes automatically, saving hours of manual typing.
Sentiment Analysis: Feed anonymized interview transcripts into an AI to analyze the emotional tone. Ask: "What are the top 3 frustrations expressed by users in this text?"
Tips
Be curious, not confirmatory
Ask questions that help uncover new information rather than prove assumptions.
Observe behavior, not just words
What users do often reveals more than what they say.
Respect participants’ time and privacy
Always obtain consent before recording or photographing.
Document immediately
Record notes and impressions right after each session to preserve detail.
Leverage AI tools ethically
Use AI to summarize transcripts, cluster insights, or detect themes — but always verify accuracy manually.
Bring frontline staff along
Involve those delivering the service; their presence helps link user insights to operational realities.
The "Hidden Delay" in Onboarding Scenario: A team is researching the registration process for a national digital platform.
The Method: The team conducted User Interviews with citizens and Job Shadowing with service center staff.
What Users Said (interview findings): Citizens reported that the online registration form was "easy to use" and simple.
The reality (observation findings): When observing the back-office, the team discovered that frontline employees were manually verifying every single identity document because the systems were disconnected. This manual step was causing a 48-hour delay that the users didn't see, but certainly felt.
If the team had only asked users, they would have thought the service was fine. By observing the Frontline Staff, they realized the problem was technical connectivity, not user interface.
By observing the reality of the process rather than just listening to opinions, the team identified that the "easy" online form was actually causing a 48-hour backend delay. This evidence allowed them to Measure Success not by "user clicks" but by the actual "time-to-verification," leading to a redesign that drastically improved the operational performance of the service.
Related Design Principles
Our design principles that relate to research guidelines.
Related service principles
Our service principles that relate to research guidelines..
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