User research and co-design activities in the early stages of development
Once the decision has been made to adapt or create a new product for the organisation, the first step in all user-centred design approaches is understanding the product specifications from an end-user perspective.
Problem discovery
These research-driven activities support the MDT to understand the problem more deeply, for end-users, incidental users and stakeholders.
Co-design and user research in the early stages involve a deep understanding of the needs and requirements of stakeholders, end and incidental users, to:
- Context of how, why, or when the technology product will be used.
- Size and breadth of the problem from a user and stakeholder perspective
- Practice, service and organisational implications.
- Circumstantial or situational barriers or challenges that could impact the successful implementation of a potential solution.
Participants invited to be involved in these early research sessions depend on the approach selected:
- UCD: Primarily end-users with representatives from stakeholder groups.
- Design thinking: Representatives from business (managers, finance, quality assurance, compliance requirements) and workforce (managers, educators, nurses, direct care workers, and auxiliary staff) as well as residents, clients and families.
Exploratory and discovery activities should encourage open discussion around the problem from the participant's perspective, allowing the MDT to understand what it is like to be in the user's shoes.
- Activities include focus groups, workshops, interviews, surveys, and field studies (observational and diary).
Products from these stages should support the development case and could include use cases, user stories, SWOT analysis, personas, and journey mapping.
From discovery to defining the problem - Mid-stage user research and co-design activities
Once MDT has a deep understanding of the problem and can empathise with users, co-design and then prototype development can begin.
Information from discovery is collated, analysed and synthesised to identify the 'real' and underlying problem to be solved for each type of user and service.
Typically, MDT internally undertake these analyses to create user-centred problem statement/s, user scenarios and product roadmaps to visualise or demonstrate use cases of the product to solve the problem identified.
Design thinking takes this further, encouraging the creation of 'outside of the box' ideas as solutions that are within scope, and possible within the constraints of the deployment environment, systems and workforce. This stage can be an MDT-only activity. However, ideation can also be a co-design activity.
Many different (and fun) techniques can be undertaken with participants, including brainstorming, mind mapping, 'The worst possible idea' and the SCAMPER technique.
The goal of these activities is to:
- Allow the MDT to build a library of ideas, features, or functions that will or could solve the problem.
- Develop low-fidelity prototypes to take to the co-design group to encourage discussion and feedback for refinement.
Once ideation and potential solutions have been identified, MDT can then create the following documentation to support prototyping, testing and implementation:
- Product requirement document (PRD) - describes the different requirements the solution should include to meet the objective of the build. This may result in a planned incremental build where subsequent versions are refined to meet the brief after the initial release.
- Technical scoping report – considers budget, time, specifications, research findings and product feasibility given existing systems.
- Product delivery roadmap - outlines timelines and resources required up to and post-release if re-versioning is needed.
Typically, the MDT experiences increased strain during the adaptation of feedback into the technical scope and then the translation of scope into the design and function of the prototype. [1]
Once the documentation has been completed, the MDT is ready to begin the next stage of development, creating prototypes to test and pilot with users in the setting where the solution will be deployed.
The prototyping and testing stage should still involve older people, their families and staff. Representatives can be those people already involved in your research activities, or they can be a new group who are recruited from the service or facility to be involved in the next stages of co-design.