Keywords

1 Introduction

In recent years, a large number of outstanding enterprises have emerged in China. All of them have make great efforts on the user research. Many small or later-coming enterprises also hope to gain core competitiveness through user research. However, they find that user research not only has a high demand for technology and team, but also has high risk. “Exploratory fieldwork requires researchers to plan for a range of outcomes” [1]. Therefore, whether the risks in user research can be controlled well determines that whether user research can be done well.

“The best companies often work closely with their customers to uncover needs and wants that can be translated into new or improved product or service offerings” [2]. First of all, two kinds of understandings shall be clarified. First, it is also risky without performance of user research. As everyone knows that the market is changing while the consumer demand is also changing, so it is impossible to try to take the fixed approach for the changing market. Then, the first-mover advantage will be grasped by the manufacturers who have conducted user research and successfully developed new products. Moreover, these manufacturers who take the first-mover advantage will use their dominant position to set a high standard for the later-coming manufacturers to make them attend the brutal homogeneous competition. As a result, the manufacturers who have not conducted user research will be forced to compete at a low price, resulting in loss of profits and unsustainable operation ultimately.

Second, user research will be performed with a certain cost. Although it can bring high revenues, such as gaining the initiative of market and excess profits and accumulating the core competitiveness, etc., the enterprise is required to understand that user research is possible to fail due to the constantly changing external factors. “Circumstances that can make it difficult to involve users in the research process include poor health, the time involved, and the challenges of travelling from home to various activities” [3]. When these problem cannot be solved, the mission of user research fails. However, it is impossible to recover the manpower, material resources and financial resources which have been invested in the user research.

2 Risk Control

The risks can be controlled from two aspects for user research. One aspect is that risk can be avoided by the model of node control, which includes three principles: Joint study; Landmark management; full participation. The transfer of risk also means the output of benefits. The large nodes in the user research process are set to conduct as landmarks. Risk assessment should be performed at these landmarks during the user research process. So the previous knowledge can be accumulated and the following risk can be effectively foreseen. As mentioned above, the process of user research is an evolutionary process, so it is impossible to accurately foresee the risks that will be faced later at the beginning of project. However, we can effectively break down the risk, or stop the project midway to avoid greater risk through dividing the whole research process into several relatively independent processes to perform risk assessment (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1.
figure 1

The model of node control

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2.1 Joint Innovation

“Employ a crossdisciplinary team, bringing in perspective from various parts of the organization” [2]. As far as joint innovation is concerned, performance of user research can be performed with the cooperation of several enterprises in the same industry. The results of user research are shared by every attending enterprise. In addition, each enterprise can conduct suitable in-depth research based on the results of the research since each one has different development directions. Now, the concept of competition is different from the past. Different enterprises seek cooperation in the process of competition. Enterprises should pay more attention to diversified competition, while each of them has its own key directions. As a corporate citizen in the society, the enterprise should think about how to seek its own development instead of how to bring down other enterprise. So it is possible to conduct joint user research among different enterprises.

From the perspective of internal organization of enterprise, it is also a very risky business to conduct user research. The enterprise is very weak in the period of reforming because it leaves its most familiar and most competitive product field but steps in a new product field that it is not very good at. The enterprise should adjust the resources resource allocation according to the external environment it is in and the internal resources that it controls.

2.2 Landmark Management

Landmark management also can be used in the process of user research. The process of user research can be divided into several distinct stages, risk assessment is conducted for each stage and different departments are required to reach a certain consensus at certain key points. This way can reduce the conflicts in the future team work and also can make everyone understand what problems will occur in the later stage and what measures should be taken for these problems. In addition, it can play the role of both risk aversion and risk warning.

Some people think that if a consensus can not be reached on a large node, each department should study the solution of existing problems until they reach a consensus. They believed that only when the entire research team has reached a consensus on this key node can they go forward to the next stage. However, we have different viewpoint on this idea. User research can not always reach a complete consensus in every step. As long as the team has a certain understanding of the problem, they can continue to carry out the next step and keep thinking about the existing problems. In fact, the answer will automatically emerge in subsequent research in many cases. If we stop moving forward, all of us may fall into endless quarrels and can not find a specific solution.

2.3 Full Participation

Full participation means that the designer shall participate in the whole process of user research. What role to play is important for designers. Designer s should research needs of the users and provide the final product simultaneously on the base of the research results. Again, the designer is the key person to finally integrates various elements and relationships into the specific product. Therefore, the designer should participate in the whole process of user research.

Besides, the designer should be involved from the beginning of the project approval because he/she has had a lot of understanding of the user’s needs in the previous projects. “It is worth adding that the research discussed here is empirical research. This is in contrast to theoretical research” [4]. The knowledge of the entire research team is constantly enriched and the understanding is gradually clear in this process, while the designer can obtain a large amount of explicit and implicit knowledge which constructs the basis of the designer’s own design.

In addition, the designer should track the using of new product after the product is launched in the market. The new product cannot be a fully mature product after launched in the market, so its shortcomings will be exposed more fully at this stage. The new product will face a wider range of users. Different consumers may purchase this product for different reasons, while the various living environments faced by consumers are more complicated than those covered by user research.

In real life, most consumers will make more or less adjustments to the products after purchasing them. “A common example of HCI research following the observational method is a usability evaluation” [4]. At this time, the designer is required to have an open mind, who should not set a standard for the use of product and force buyers to learn this standard, but should fully observe the consumers’ operation during the using process. So we will enter another stage of user research, that is, from creating something out of nothing to seeking the better solutions. The designer can ask questions directly about a product in this stage. The mission of the user research will be over when the product is improved to a certain extent. When will we end the user research is related to the aim of the user research mission that was originally set.

Since the design is not performed only by the designer, but by a team. If the designer can not participate in the whole process, the designer and other team members will have a big gap in the accumulation of knowledge and understanding of the research objectives in the later design process. The whole team and team members have accumulated a lot of implicit knowledge in the process of user research. It is difficult for the designer who has not participated in the whole process to communicate with other team members on the same knowledge platform.

3 Case Study

3.1 Introduction of the Company

X Company was founded in the early 1990s, which has become a well-known sports goods company in China. Its main businesses include selling sports shoes and sportswear, as well as other related businesses. The types of shoes mainly include soccer shoes, basketball shoes, tennis shoes and running shoes, etc.; Sportswear mainly includes basketball uniforms and soccer uniforms, etc. Today, the market situation faced by this company is that it still can gain generous profits in the market due to its early access to markets. However, this company has a sense of incompetence when facing the internationally renowned manufacturers, such as Nike and Adidas, etc., and has a strong unsafe sense when facing the rise of many domestic sports goods manufacturers.

3.2 Introduction of the Design Department

Shoe design department and clothing design department are the two main design departments of the company. The design department has developed a design process (see Fig. 2 for details). Production Design Direction refers to the product plan issued by the company product planning department. Color Flow refers to a table about the base colors, the popular colors (seasonal colors) and sports-specific colors of the product. The design department will confirm whether the colors used in this season are harmonious and whether there are color conflicts between the categories according to the table. Collection Map refers to the overall design idea based on the division of the categories, which is presented by pictures, such as classical and youth, etc. Fabric Pages refers to the use of specific manufacturing materials to express the specific design scheme.

Fig. 2.
figure 2

Design process of X Company

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The shoe design process is similar to the costume design process. The designers will discuss the overall design at first, while each design will be always managed by a same designer. A shoe designer thinks that they will learn from the advanced craft of Nike and Adidas, but they do not learn from their design ideas. Designers believe that the design of the shoes with low price more relies on the designer’s design experience. They rarely do user testing during the design process. Generally speaking, the test of the product is carried out in the Order-placing meeting. The advantages and disadvantages of the design will be judged according to the order quantity of the dealer.

They believe that the quality of design is mainly relied on two factors: 1. China’s large and diverse consumer groups, which enable the sales of any kinds of products; 2. Design experience and intuition that designers have formed over the years, while they believe that the price but not the design is the first competitiveness in the Chinese market. Besides the ordinary task, the company will also set up special groups for special events, such as the Olympic.

There are four people in the R&D department of the company, two of which collect information, one of which is engaged in bio-mechanical research and the other is engaged in mould research. There is a market research department inside the company, but most of the research work is performed by outside professional companies. There are flagship stores in the bustling streets of the important cities. The different layout is used to distinguish the product categories. There are a focus booth and a historical review area in the store, and the male and female products are distinguished by the background color. In addition, the company participates in Sporting-goods Fair every year.

3.3 Description of Problems

The designers believe that the problem lies with the persons who executed the process instead of the process itself. Everyone has different understanding of the process. In addition, it is impossible to operate in full accordance to the planed process due to the limited number of designers and insufficient time and effort.

The clothing design department and the shoe design department are not integrated. So good shoe designs can not be penetrated into the clothing design while the good clothing designs can not match the shoe design. Most communications between designers rely on private communication since there are few formal communication channels.

The supervisor of the clothing design department believed that clothing products are also the psychological products and instant products. Moreover, intuitive design accounts for 80% in clothing design. There is a lack of communication with users and a lack of research on users in the process of design. They said that they also needed do some user research during the design process, such as taking some photos and doing some simple conversations, but all of which were superficial.

According to the design process, the product planning group formulates a product planning and submits it to the design department to complete. The product planning group includes product manager and analysis group. However, the design department thinks that they are in a passive situation because the upstream product planning team constantly vetoes their design, while the downstream development department (responsible for making samples) often believes that their design planning can’t be realized.

The market research department thought that inter-departmental coordination is not smooth enough- market research sometimes intervenes too early and sometimes too late.

There are three problems of the flagship store:

  1. 1.

    The highlights of design can not be expressed from the shop design;

  2. 2.

    The design of the store is ordinary with low sense of grade;

  3. 3.

    The store layout is dominated by graphic design and lacks interactive design.

4 Problem Analysis and Suggestions

In view of the above problems, we put forward six suggestions according to the risk control model of user research.

4.1 Sufficient Resources

All designers complain about the situation of under-staffing. However, according to further survey, sometimes the designers are very busy and sometimes very idle, which is related to the launch schedule of the products. In view of this, two suggestions are proposed:

  1. a.

    The company is advised to deeply understand the characteristics of the designers’ work and make good use of their redundant time. For example, the designers should put the main energy into the product design if the design time is very urgent, while conduct user research in the idle time;

  2. b.

    The company should recruit more employees, so as to conduct user research at any time according to the needs of product development. Actually, user research is a kind of work with high accumulation.

4.2 Landmark Management

Different task of user research demands different knowledge background. Different User research have different aim and schedule. For an example, the Olympic project should cost a long time to communicate with the Olympic Organizing Committee. And it also cost a long time to understand the real need of the athletes. According to the model of the “Nude control”, it will bring huge risk if the team cannot reach a consensus at some important landmarks. We advised them to clarify the logic of the project an sum up the all nudes.

4.3 Joint Innovation

The employees of this company are very young, with an average age of less than 30. There should have a quite relaxed atmosphere in the company and everyone can express his/her own opinions. Moreover, a Continuous learning department should be established. Many experts and scholars from various institutions should invited to communicated. According to Joint Innovation, the shoe design department should cooperated with the clothing design department to share the risk and the achievement of the user research.

In addition, in terms of the research process of user research, user research necessarily involves different aspects of users, which requires people from different disciplines to participate in the research. It is impossible to get useful research results if different disciplines can not be integrated. There is always a dispute between qualitative research and quantitative research when conducting user research. This dispute can be solved through forming a interdisciplinary team.

4.4 Full Participation

The design department, product planning department and product planning department have a close relationship, but have a poor relationship with other departments in this company. In the study, we found a fact that the market research department had conducted a market research on a new style of shoes and had already had results, but the design department knew nothing about it. In addition, the market research department believed that the research should be completed by them and tended to invite the other professional companies to conduct the research due to the problems of concept and manpower of the department. In this regard, two suggestions are given to the company: a. The communication between various departments should be strengthened if the personal of these departments can not form a team to work together under the current conditions. Moreover, the design department should participate in the entire operation of the company, including advertising and the design of the display store, etc.; b. The designers must participate in the user’s field research, which can help them deeply understand the user. “Making conscious use of user participation in research, the researchers develop increased understanding of their own research field, acquire more respect for the users, and form stronger contacts with the groups of users with whom they conduct the research” [2].

5 Conclusion

After we analyzed the design department, we reached a census with the company. Firstly, if they did not invest enough resources in the user research, they couldn’t get valuable results, which was a huge waste of resources. So they agreed to recruit new employees. Secondly, different projects had different aims. If the company used the same user research workflow and divided different project into a same landmark framework, it is also dangerous. So we planned a new landmark framework for their ongoing projects. Last, but definitely not least is to re-understand the effect of designers. “As many of these products offer the satisfaction of different and sometimes even contradictory needs, any direct conclusion from the features of such a product as to the effects it may have on its users would be shortsighted” [5]. The company agreed to let the designers to attend more meeting and do a lot more work in the process of the user research.