Foreword

You, lucky reader, are about to learn everything you always wanted to know about research but were afraid to ask. With her trademark deadpan wit and incisive clarity, Erika Hall walks you through what research is (and isn’t), how to convince your team to dedicate money and effort to it, how to work on it collaboratively, and—here’s the part you could spend a whole MBA semester on and still not have all the answers—how to actually do it.

Erika recommends that her readers “make friends with reality,” which may be the most perfect definition of what it means to do design and product research I’ve ever heard. The reality you are invited to make friends with is that the world is full of people who are different from you. And, as a person who designs products and experiences for people, it is your job to understand their perspectives, needs, and desires in their real-life contexts.

Opening yourself and your work up to what total strangers have to say can be scary stuff. It may challenge your entire worldview, cause you to question closely held beliefs, even lead you to change the way you move through the universe.

I would argue that this is a good thing. Talking to people to find out what the world looks like, sounds like, and feels like to them—what it is to them—should be your standard operating procedure.

For the work of inventing, adapting, and improving the products you make for people—as Erika will deftly convince you—such questioning is absolutely necessary.

—Kio Stark