Customer & User Research in Branding

Ian Paget: This interview is following on from the conversation with Philip VanDusen. He briefly covered the topic of user research and suggested that he could put me in touch with someone. He kindly put me in touch with you, so I thought it would be amazing to have an in-depth discussion around user research.

I have a number of questions running through a typical brand identity project. I'm not expert on the topic at all, so I'm sure that the questions I have will probably steer off-track quite a bit. But I think, as a starting point for listeners that aren't familiar with what it is, would you mind giving an overview as to what user research is?

Michele Ronson: Sure. Thanks for having me, Ian. User research is the process of figuring out how people think about, interpret, and use products and services. It's adapted from and builds on a variety of methods from social science, HCI, design, and other domains.

Ultimately, it helps us build empathy for the people that will consume or use the products and services we're designing in an evidence-based and structured manner. That would be the high-level goal. The end goal, though, is to improve people's experience while using these products and services.

Ian Paget: I can imagine that there's quite a lot involved in this type of thing. I've got a number of questions to hopefully dig deeper into specific things. The starting point is to understand who the client's target audience is. Personally, I just ask the question of "Who is your target audience?" I ask them to describe their ideal customer. Are there any more effective ways to understand who a client's target audience is?

Michele Ronson: Yes. I actually wrote about this on LinkedIn a few months ago. I'm very, very active on LinkedIn-

Ian Paget: Okay. I can link to that in the show notes, so if you can send that to me afterwards so that people can go and check that out.

Michele Ronson: Sure. In user research, we don't really segment by demographic, if you will. We collect feedback and data from the people who most closely represent who we are designing for. To start, I identify the characteristics of the people I would and would not want to include. We likely end up with a combination of attitudes and behavioural characteristics. But many demographic variables may not be important, like gender or ethnicity.

We work with clients to identify these what we refer to as segments that are most relevant for the question that we're exploring. We want to take into consideration their mental space. Think, if you will, if we're purchasing, or if we're looking to do some research on food shopping, and how people think about food shopping for, say, a new meal-kit delivery service.We might segment on behaviour, or we might segment on attitude.

Behaviour, an example would be we're looking for people who food shop three or more times a week. But an attitude might be we're looking for people who don't like the process of food shopping, or the experience of food shopping, or don't enjoy it. We segment on both behaviour or attitude, or both. Now, the identification can vary in either case, but the identification or the segment aspect has no bearing on how difficult it will actually be to recruit those people.

The client might say, "We're targeting people who are interested in a new meal-delivery service." Well, that's great, but we want to get a little bit deeper there. We want to probably identify them by behaviour or attitude, or both.

Ian Paget: That's really fascinating. I never really thought about that, because when you think target audience, you start to paint a picture of the type of person, rather than their behaviour or attitude. That's a fascinating approach.

Michele Ronson: Yeah, it's really, sometimes, depending upon how UX mature a client is, and that's another way of saying where do they fall on the spectrum between being completely unaware of user experience and practicing day-to-day user-centred design, and implementing it culturally on a regular basis? Where a customer or client is in their UX maturity lifecycle or span often indicates, also, their ability to speak at this level, and create their own segments, or even be aware to know about the difference between behaviours or attitudes and what we're looking to learn about.

Yeah, it's more about product and service use and utility and design, than it is about more traditional marketing demographics in most instances. Yeah.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that's fascinating. Out of that initial starting point, when working with the customer, if you do want to understand things like behaviour and attitudes, are there certain questions that you can ask the client that you're working with to better understand what those are?

Michele Ronson: Yeah, so I like to start by identifying three characteristics of the people we want to include, and three characteristics of people we want to exclude. That's usually a good starting point.

Let's take a real estate app, right? A home buying app, for example. Let's say we want to target people who are actively shopping for a new home, and use mobile apps as a way to identify prospective homes to consider. Then we also want to ensure there are people that are buying their first home. Those would be three characteristics that we want to include.

Now, three characteristics that we may want to exclude are anybody who is shopping for a home with a family member other than a spouse, anyone who is looking to purchase a home with a non-traditional loan, or anybody who is purchasing a home in a bloated real estate market like San Francisco or New York City. It's a great way to get a client into the mindset of what characteristics would be most helpful for us to gather this information, and what characteristics would be least helpful, or not helpful, in order for us to gather this information.

Ian Paget: That sounds like a really good approach to take. In terms of the next phase, so if you are creating an identity, and this is the part where I've always never really been sure how to approach it, which is why I wanted to ask Philip the question, is, okay, you've identified who that target audience is. You've approached it in the sense that you're targeting behaviour and attitude, rather than a specific type of person.

Once you've identified that, say you're designing an identity, or yeah, let's focus on identity. If you're creating an identity for this specific type of person, what user research can you carry out before doing anything in order to properly understand what would attract that type of person?

Michele Ronson: User research is never done, when implemented properly in a UX mature organisation. It's a continuous process, like sales or marketing.

In the beginning phrases, in the initial phases, we refer to as formative research, where we're gathering a better understanding. Or generative research, where we're generating a better understanding of the landscape of the competition, of the mental model of the type of person that we are designing for, and how they think about and what sort of emotions and attitudes they have about this particular company, this industry, this topic, this experience.

We perform secondary research, if you will, to find out what's out there from a competitive standpoint, and maybe use some media or Facebook groups, or find out what existing information that other people compiled that may contribute to what we're designing. Then we may speak to some people in this area, and use some of those hypotheses or assumptions to test the waters, if you will.

By the time we actually put a pen to paper, or push any sort of pixels around, we're starting with an informed point-of-view. We're starting with a perspective in which we have already gathered some information and understood the motivations or the initial underlying behaviours around this topic, company, industry, market, experiences, whatever we're studying.

Ian Paget: If I understand it right you, in terms of that initial research, it would be more generic, so understanding more people's perceptions of the industry, the competition in general, what exists out there, as opposed to putting any kind of focus on your client's company.

Michele Ronson: Well, that may be part of the initial research, too, is "How do you think about this company in this space?" Or "How would you describe what this company offers compared to what this company offers?" Or "What emotions come to mind?" This is assuming that it's an existing company. If we're creating it from scratch, we would take a different route.

No, we might mine for that. I mean, it goes back to what are we looking to learn, or what are we looking to design, or improve, or build? But depending upon what our research question is, we would probe, in a very iterative approach ... User research is very iterative. It's focused in generally in smaller sprints, if you will, to establish a baseline understanding of what our research question is, and how people respond to that. We would come at it from a variety of different approaches.

Ian Paget: Right. Right. You've mentioned about these smaller sprints. Do you have a real-life example that you can give, so that we can better understand what that means?

Michele Ronson: Sure. When people say, "But what do you actually do as a user researcher?" Companies come to me, generally, with one of eight or nine questions, and in any particular order. It doesn't have to be any sequence. But a very common question is "What should we build?"

They have found an opportunity space, or a gap, that they think that they are uniquely positioned to fill. There's a thing, and they think that they're the right people to solve that thing, but they don't know how to approach it, or where to approach it, or where to start, so that first question is often, "What should I build?" Or "What should we build?"

Another is "Who are my customers?" By that, I mean not demographically, but "Who are they, really? How do they think about x, y, z? How are they fulfilling or responding to x, y, z today? Where are they going to take care of x, y, z today? What's working, what's not? What's emerging in the landscape, or trending according to x, y, z? Where are they before, during, and after x, y, z? How do they relate to x, y, z? What words did they use to discuss this?" Right? So "Who are my customers?"

Then, "Am I building the right thing?" Let's say that a concept exists, or a prototype exists, or a sketch exists. They often want to know, like, "Are we going in the right direction?" Or "How close are we?" That's where we get into the "Am I building the right thing?" kind of question, and that is more of an evaluative approach, where we're actually at a point where we can evaluate how close we are, and how people interpret it, and how people compare and contrast it, and describe it, or how usable it is.

Then, the flip-side of that question is, "Am I building the thing right?" Right? You have two sides of this coin, "Am I building the right thing?" and "Am I building the thing right?" "Am I building the right thing?" might be "Is this home shopping app feature the right response to help people organise and categorise their favourite homes over time, so that they can easily compare them and share them with a partner?"

Right? Or "Am I building the thing right?" There's five ways to solve that same problem, if you will. That gets more into the evaluative space.

I can go on with the other questions, but hopefully that will help.

Ian Paget: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I just wanted to gain a better understanding of what you meant, I guess, in summary, when you carry out any form of research, you need to know exactly what question you need to ask...

Michele Ronson: Exactly. Yes.

Ian Paget: ...so that you get the information that you want out of the end of it. I know that probably sounds obvious to you, but from someone with my background, that's never done any form of user research, it's made a lot more sense of how you would go about approaching it. Basically, any time you need to know a specific piece of information, so for example, that if you are creating a new identity, and you did have the question of "Who are we aiming to target?" That's the question, and then you can carry out the research in whatever way seems necessary.

Michele Ronson: Right, so if we're ... User research solves people problems, if you will, so ideally we're not asking that question. We would have already identified the people problem that we're solving for-

Ian Paget: Right. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Michele Ronson: ... versus the other way. But yes, we definitely want to be really, really clear on what are we looking to learn, and who are the best people to provide us feedback about that topic? It might be just-in-time feedback, right? If we're looking to learn about how people compare stackable washer and dryer purchases, we might want to intercept people at Sears, or Lowe's, or some sort of retailer that sells those types of products, so we can catch them in the moment.

Ian Paget: Right.

Michele Ronson: We say, "We want to ask the right people the right questions at the right time." That's the magic special sauce there, and the planning of it is paramount. Learning to craft a great research plan is critical, and it's both very creative, and it's very strategic. I teach a whole class, actually, on just writing the plan.

Not only what goes into the plan, but who is involved in that plan. My stakeholder engagement is the number one sign or indicator of success, to me. I know the more engaged my stakeholders are, the more likely I am to move them from insights into action.

Ian Paget: Yeah, so there's a number of questions I have just from what you said then. Bear with me with this. I know you said about capturing the people in the moment. Say, for example, if you wanted to find out information on the way that someone shops within, or their opinions of, say, washing machines, the most effective way to do that would be to go in to your local white goods supplier. Would you just go in there with a list of questions and just, I don't know, when you see someone looking around, you would just ask a few set questions to try to gather together certain research? Is that how that would work in that specific scenario?

Michele Ronson: Well, we could also intercept them while they're shopping online, right? Let's just say the client is Sears, or Home Depot, so assuming that we have access to their back-end, if we will, we could design a remote intercept. So that if someone is comparing two different sets of washer-dryers, we could have something that pops up and says, "Hey, I see that you're looking for a new washer-dryer. Can we ask you a few questions about this?" Or "We're running a study about this. Would you be interested in participating?"

Going in to a retailer, you have to be very careful. Number one, that it would be one thing if Sears was the client, and we went into Sears, but it's another thing if Sears is the client, and we're going into Home Depot.

Ian Paget: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. If you was to do it online, you could use your client's website, pop up some kind of thing asking a question, then it could go through to some kind of form. Or if you did want to do the offline research, you would have to be quite lucky that your particular client has their own series of stores, so that you are able to do that.

That's interesting. It seems like there's so many different approaches that you could take to gather that information.

Michele Ronson: Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's dozens of other approaches that we could take, too. The approach and the methods we use will differ depending upon where we are in the product or service development lifecycle. Are we at that foundational phase? Are we at that generative phase? Or are we at that evaluative phase? Then, what are looking to learn? Are we looking to learn, again, about their attitudes, are are we looking to learn about their behaviours, or are we looking to learn about both?

Then, also, how much time do we have? Do we have two hours? Do we have two days? Do we have two weeks? Do we have two months? When is this information needed in order to make an informed decision? Are we exploring for a new line of washer and dryers? Are we looking to act really quickly, because of some recall or rebate, or something like that? The plan itself, we design the research plans to gather the information we need to make those sorts of confident decisions in the timeframe that we need to make those decisions.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah. Would you mind explaining what goes inside a research plan?

Michele Ronson: Oh, sure. A research plan will include the high-level goals of what you're looking to learn. Who are the characteristics of the people we are looking to learn from? How those learnings will be applied, right? What will happen with the findings? What is the approach that we will take? Which methods will we use to answer specific questions?

It may also include recruiting details, like how we will find these people, where we will incent them. It may include details about the format of the deliverables, so am I producing a presentation format? Is that going to include video clips? Is it going to include key quotes? Is it going to include a journey map? Am I presenting a mini-museum? What will it look like?

It may include the budget. It may include a very detailed timeline. It expands and contracts, if you will, depending upon, it goes back to the UX maturity of the company, but it always, always should include how the question that we are exploring is tied into the company's success metrics, or KPIs, or OPRs, or some sort of strategic effort or plan to ensure that it is in line with where the company is moving towards, and to create a direct connection.

It also should include the stakeholders. Who wants to know the answers to these questions?

Ian Paget: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's fascinating. It sounds like any research that you do carry out... and, now that you've said it, it seems totally obvious, but it's very clear, very measurable, and you know exactly what's going to come out. Or you know exactly what you want to come out of the end of it, which is... now you've said it, it seems obvious, but until speaking to you, it wasn't.

Michele Ronson: People are surprised there's a blueprint here. There is definitely a method to the madness, but there's a ton of creativity there.

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Michele Ronson: Which is one of the reasons why I love it so much. I mean, as a recovering designer myself, I obviously understand how to design things, right? Because that's my first language, if you will. But being able to combine my design background with research, in an analytical and very structured approach, was the best of both worlds. To me, design and user research is equal parts art, science, and improv.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Yeah, I totally agree. That's why I wanted to have an episode on this topic, because I felt like I got to a point, as a graphic designer, where there's only so much research that you can do on your own. Then, I've got to a point where I want to be better than I am, and in order to be better than I am, I actually need to know facts of what the user would expect to see, and be able to test my work.

I feel like it's almost the single thing that can take a designer from being the person that's popping out $500 logos, to being someone that is able to charge in the tens of thousands of pounds, because they're not just designing something, they are discovering evidence to provide the most effective solution fact, because they have the data to back it up. That's why I think it's really important.

Michele Ronson: It is. Taking that strategic approach, I think, definitely separates, first of all, I guess there's different levels, right? First, there's a basic awareness that there are different levels, right? Just like in design, there's the basics of understanding type, and there are people that choose type from a dropdown menu, and what's available. Then there's people who understand the nuances of a ligature, and an x-height, and kerning, and leading. When to use a display face, and when not to. That is a very, very nuanced level of finesse and detail in the space. It doesn't matter what program you're using, if you have those foundations.

Research is the same way. It's a learn-by-doing type of craft, and acknowledging even that awareness of the different levels, and becoming more strategic, is the first step, for sure.

Ian Paget: Yeah. It's been interesting, too, just what we've spoken about so far, that identifying exactly what information you want to know is the first point, and then working out how to find out the answer to that is the creative part. That there's not necessarily, and correct me if I'm wrong, but there's not necessarily a set way of gaining that data, but you need to be creative based on what you are able to do in the timescale, and the budget, and everything like that.

Michele Ronson: Yes, and also how much confidence is needed. That is going to impact which methods we use. Is it going to be quantitative, or is it going to be qualitative? There's also this great sense of improv when you're live. I conduct a ton of one-on-one sessions where I gather feedback from people through a conversation, or in a discussion guide, if you will. But then I might add on another series of activities where I ask them to show me something. Or I ask them to draw me something. Or I ask them to tell me a story about something, or fill in the blanks about something.

In that live situation, I mean, you can only plan so much. Until you're on-stage, basically, and you're live. Anything can happen there, right?

Ian Paget: Yeah.

Michele Ronson: You don't know how they're going to respond. That part is super fun, too. You can control absolutely as much as possible, until you're on.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Totally understand that. Now, I'm thinking through the process. We've got to this point where we have gathered together all of the information that we need to prepare the work, and in terms of using that knowledge, I think we can leave that as a separate thing. But once you've designed a number of solutions, that's the point I'm really interested in, and I know that audience members will likely be. Once you've designed a number of options, what can you do from a user research perspective to know that what you've done is actually right, and it will be effective for the business, and it will perform for the business?

Michele Ronson: Again, well, user research is primarily focused on product and service design, but what if Philip, and Philip and I have worked together before. If Philip, or someone like yourself, came to me and said, with this question, my response would typically be something along the lines of, "Well, ideally we are designing a number of solutions without gathering the input to inform those sketches upfront."

Ian Paget: Yeah, I would assume that. Yes.

Michele Ronson: Okay.

Ian Paget: Because I think, I know at the beginning of the conversation, we went through what you could potentially pull together. But realistically, unless you can, or in my case, anyway, realistically, unless I have the budget to pay someone else to do that, I don't feel I have the skillset to go out there and properly gather that information together. It would make more sense for me to employ someone like you, or a company that is specialise in gathering that information together.

But it's the testing of the actual logo that you've done, I feel that would be a great service to have, and it gives you more confidence that what you've done is right, and also you get more buy-in from the client. That's why I'm personally quite excited about that side of things. It would be great to go into a little bit more detail.

Michele Ronson: Yeah. Assuming we have some sort of direction to begin with, when we start the sketch, then what I would do is I would, we could use a number of different methods depending upon what we're looking to learn. If we're looking to learn what do people think of these logos? What emotions come up for them, or how would they interpret what they think the company does, or what the company offers? We could show them those sketches, and ask them to describe how they interpret it, and what words that they would use. What emotions come to mind, what offerings do you think that they serve?

Now, in many cases, we might need some sort of scenario to bring this to life. If the company name is One, Two, Three Glass Company, it might not be very clear to me, is this a windowpane company, or is this a drinking wineglass company? If you will. We'll want to provide them with some context, or maybe we mock it up in context, on say a sales page, or a tear sheet, or a homepage of a website, something like that.

Or, so we might do a concept test, if you will, to gather some feedback on how people are interpreting that concept. Or we may do what's referred to as a click-test, where we could show two versions and say, in an unmoderated way, you can run this on a platform. We could say, "Click on the logo that represents energy, or represents more energy or strength, to you." Or we could say, "Click on the version of the logo who has better colours." Like, "Which version of this logo colour scheme do you prefer?"

Or we could do something called a five-second test, where we show something for five seconds, and then we take it away, and then we ask them to describe what they think they saw, what was more important on the page, or what was most memorable, or something like that. It goes back to, again, what are we looking to learn about? Are we looking to learn about what's unique, or are we looking to learn about what emotions it conjures up? Or are we looking to learn about if it fits within the context? Are we looking to learn about a colour scheme? What are we looking to discover?

Ian Paget: Yeah, so if you were doing that online, if I understand right, you would create the landing page. Philip spoke briefly about this, so he discussed using Facebook Ads to promote this. Are there any other ways of attracting people to this page, or is it just simply a case of using general online marketing methods to attract people to fill out these forms, or answer these questions, or do these click-tests, and so on?

Michele Ronson: Well, Facebook Ads are very helpful to generate interest and awareness. I wouldn't use Facebook Ads to gather feedback on concepts.

Ian Paget: Right.

Michele Ronson: Unless you're recruiting people to then participate in some sort of concept testing, if you will. I want to be clear about that. When you do recruit from a place like Facebook, again, you want to make sure, regardless of where you're recruiting from, that you're recruiting the right people at the right time.

Let's go back to that real estate app, right? We're looking to implement a ... The question is, "Should we implement or design a feature that will allow people to save homes and share them with their spouse, so that they could easily compare and contrast, and recall homes that interested them?" Right?

If we were looking to recruit, we would be, again, going back to our criteria. We would be looking to recruit people who are active home buyers, people who use mobile apps in their shopping process, and I forget what other criteria. We would exclude people in crazy markets. We would exclude people ...

What we might want to do is recruit them through Facebook, but then we would have to put them through a screener to make sure that we're screening in the right people, and out the wrong people. I teach a whole class just on how to author a screener, and why it's so important. Because if we're not asking the right people the right questions, it doesn't matter what data we collect.

Ian Paget: Yeah. So with anything like that, I've never seen anything like it online, so if you was to use Facebook advertising, would you get them to fill out some kind of questionnaire, and that's how you would screen them? Or-

Michele Ronson: Yes.

Ian Paget: ... or would you use a different approach?

Michele Ronson: Yes.

Ian Paget: Okay.

Michele Ronson: We could, yes, we could use a ... Yes, like a quick survey, if you would. We would start off pretty, by saying like, "Which of the following ... " We wouldn't make it very obvious. We wouldn't say, "We are looking to find people to participate in a study to determine whether or not we should explore this new feature about yada yada." We would talk about it at a higher level, and say, "We're recruiting for a study in this space, generally. Please complete the following questions to see whether or not you qualify." We would have some gotcha questions in there, if you will.

Ian Paget: You implied that Facebook wasn't the best way to do this without pre-screening the people. How would you normally approach it online?

Michele Ronson: Well, regardless of where you're gathering people from, we always want to screen them.

Ian Paget: Right. Okay.

Michele Ronson: We want to screen in the people with the characteristics and the behaviours that we've identified, and we want to screen out the people who don't meet that criteria. Wherever, I mean, whether we get them at the supermarket, or we intercept them while they're shopping for their washer and dryer, it doesn't matter where we find them. We always want to confirm that we are talking with the right people.

Ian Paget: Yeah, so whether you did it offline, online, whatever questions you would ask them, you pre-screen them to make sure that they're the right person?

Michele Ronson: Exactly, yes. Because we want to ask the right people the right questions at the right time.

Ian Paget: Yeah, fantastic. I mean, that in itself would provide you with so much more clarity, because I know when I spoke about this with Philip, I know that he was a little bit unsure on the best way of doing it. Having that screening process does make so much more sense.

Ian Paget: You know what I love with the internet? That anyone can offer this as a potential service. You mentioned that you had a course, a training course on how to approach it?

Michele Ronson: I do. I offer five classes directly. They're all remote. The first class is called Plan, and it's all about crafting a winning research plan with stakeholder buy-in. Again, that, it's really critical to have that buy-in, because the stakeholder engagement is one of the surest signs of success. The plan is where we make sure that we are identifying the right questions to ask, and finding the right people to ask those questions to, and right-sizing the approach with the time we have available, and the budget, and how it aligns with an organisations company goals and metrics, and some other very dynamic, creative pieces.

Then the Survey Screen class, which I think is maybe what you were asking about. That is really how to make sure that we are recruiting the right people. That is focused not only on who we recruit, but where we recruit them, how many we should be recruiting. How many we need to speak with is dependent upon how many segments we have, and what types of methods we are using, but how many people we recruit is very different.

There, we go through the pros and cons of different question-types, and when to use which ones, and different platforms from which to recruit from. We explore different ways to both pipe and branch, and sequence questions. Not only just for screeners, but for surveys, also.

Then, the Interview class focuses on how to author a discussion guide to get the right people talking. There's very distinct types of questions that we ask in a very distinct sequence to help ensure that we're gathering the right information from the right people at the right time.

Ian Paget: Well, I need to go and check that one out myself, because with the beauty of the internet, pretty much anyone can set these things up, but they just need to be able to ask the right questions. I know we've spoken for like 45-50 minutes now, and there's only so much that we can really go through. It's all of that information that would allow someone to go out there and do it themselves, they wouldn't need to go and hire someone.

But, and I'm sure that this is covered in the course, but I'd like to ask this as a question. It sounds like when you do this, you obviously need to find people, and you can use platforms like Facebook, or you can use other methods, and then you send them through to pages. Do you need to build all of that from scratch in order to do that research? Or are there softwares, or systems, or platforms that you can just, I don't know, pay a monthly fee for and use? Is there anything out there like that for this type of thing?

Michele Ronson: There are some platforms that you can use to run studies. Some of those platforms have some canned questions, if you will. There's always going to be some sort, or, I mean, let me revise that. There should be a significant level of customisation, because your questions and what you're looking to learn, are different than what the organisation to the left and to the right is looking to learn.

Oftentimes, clients will ask me to write what we refer to as question banks, if you will. That's where I might author 100 or 200 questions that are specific for a client, that use their distinct language. Those might include questions about content discoverability, content comprehension, feature comparison, or to describe or compare this functionality versus that functionality.

I'll write questions. Here's a bank of warm-up questions. Here's a bank of digging in deeper questions. Here's a bank of Likert Scale questions. Here's a bank of wrap-up questions. So that the teams have something to dive into, and they're starting with a place where they have a series of questions to pull from that they know do not contain any sort of bias. They're neutral questions that are pertinent and relevant for their organisation.

Ian Paget: That question bank that you're creating, how have you learnt how to put these questions together?

Michele Ronson: I have a number of teaching tools that I would be happy to share with your audience, too.

Ian Paget: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I'd love to put that in the show notes, so if you could send that over, I'll make sure to include it.

Michele Ronson: Yeah, yeah. I'll take a note of that. There's different types of questions, and when we're going through something like a one-on-one interview, there's a sequence in which we communicate. We call that a story arc. Regardless of the topic, or regardless of how long this conversation is, we always follow the same arc. That arc is going to include an introduction, a kick-off, a ramp-up, and then a focus on the topic area, in which to explore that deeper dive.

Then we're going to go through a period where we're going to affirm what we think we heard, and then we are going to wrap up and create space for the person that we're speaking with to provide us with feedback on anything that maybe that we didn't think to ask about, or anything that maybe they think might be important for us to know in hindsight.

It always follows that story arc, so my question banks tend to follow that story arc. Or you can sort them by topic. Say you are running a, I'll use that content test example. You're running a series of content tests, so you want to ... Here we have, "Here's five questions about learnability. Here's five questions about comprehension. Here's five questions about simplicity. Here's five questions about meaning, or interpretation," and things like that.

Ian Paget: You know what? That would make a really good product, if there were something like that for people working in logo design, or identity design. I don't know if that already exists, but that would be a fantastic book to have, like '100 Questions That You Would Ask When Testing a Logo Design'.

Michele Ronson: Oh, my gosh. I should write that!

Ian Paget: You should write that. I don't know if they exist, but how great would that be? Because it sounds like you've developed some kind of framework. I don't know how you learned how to do that, whether you developed it yourself. It sounds like people hire you to do that, so I have to assume that you've developed your own process. If there was some kind of book out there about the questions to ask, and it was just a book full of questions, maybe with a brief introduction. If that doesn't already exist, you need to write that, and I'll help you promote it.

Michele Ronson: Oh, my gosh! I would love to do that.

Ian Paget: I have been.... and I might cut this out, but I have been planning to do some kind of magazine series called Logo Talk, because I have a backlog of 80 episodes, and I've got interviews in there with people like Tom Geismar, and Sagi Haviv, and Aaron Draplin, and Louise Fili. There's all these big names in there, and it feels like, because I've paid to get them all transcribed, and I've got them all on the website.

But how great would it be if they were cataloged in some way? It would be really good if there was one that was on the Top 100 Questions to Ask When Testing a Logo, and it's called Logo Testing. But that could be a great book in its own right.

Michele Ronson: Yeah, I-

Ian Paget: You definitely have to do it. If that's one of the things that you do all of the time, then-

Michele Ronson: Absolutely.

Ian Paget: ... I recon you could write the ultimate bible for it.

Michele Ronson: Oh, my gosh, so what kind of topics would it cover. What categories of questions come to mind for you?

Ian Paget: I don't know. I'm going to leave this in, but okay, so I don't know exactly what the questions would be. But say if designers want to test the logo. The book would be fantastic if it had, or the questions that you would ask ... Maybe there could be different scenarios. Yeah, I don't know what those questions are.

That's why I wanted to get you on this as a podcast. But actually, if you could create that as a resource, a paid resource. I don't think anyone should get it for free, because there's a lot of work that goes into that. But that would be an amazing product that I would personally use. Because as I said at the beginning, something that I would like to do, longterm, is get to the point where I can charge tens of thousands of pounds for logo design.

I think what really makes the difference, or the way that I see it, in order to charge those high figures, what I design needs to be right. The only way to know that it's right is to actually perform tests, and to use market research. To do user testing and gather together all of that information. If a single designer is able to carry out this work themselves, then it's amazing.

Because there are tools like Facebook, where you can do very targeted advertising, if this book contained these screening questions, that would be amazing. I know you said that you had that training course, but it could also be in a book, maybe. Screening questions would be great, and also the questions that you would want to maybe ask, so that you've got this bank of questions that you can reference. I don't know what would be in there, but if you've done this exercise a number of times for clients, it would be an amazing book for anyone working in logo or identity to be able to test what they're doing.

Michele Ronson: That's such a great idea, and it builds just so squarely on my designer experience and education. My first life.

Ian Paget: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we can collaborate on it.

Michele Ronson: Let's, yeah.

Ian Paget: I mean, I'll leave this in the podcast.

Michele Ronson: Awesome.

Ian Paget: If anyone is interested in it, let us both know, or let Michele know, because she's the one doing the work, and I'll just help her to promote it. But I would like that, so if anyone is interested in that, send Michele an e-mail, and maybe it will motivate her to create a product specific for that.

Michele Ronson: Definitely. Michele@curiositytank.com. I love this idea!

Ian Paget: These things always happen when you have ... You know what you said earlier on, about when you have live conversations, you never know what's going to come out it.

Michele Ronson: Yep! That's the improv.

Ian Paget: I came in with all of these questions, and loads of things that come up, and we've ultimately ended it with, "This product would be amazing!"

Michele Ronson: What we would do from here is we would gather some, do a little bit of secondary research to find out does something like this exist? What's the appetite for something like this? We could even do some Facebook Ads to gauge the interest, and we could target it towards designers that are looking to-

Ian Paget: I have a Facebook Group that's only logo designers.

Michele Ronson: Uh-huh (affirmative).

Ian Paget: So they're already pre-screened. I don't let clients in, so it's only logo designers in that group, so we can use that.

Michele Ronson: That's a great thing. Bring it out to the Facebook Group, and see what kind of feedback you get. You could just say, "Hey, I did this podcast with a researcher, and we were talking about an idea to yada, yada, yada."

Ian Paget: I mean, I'm putting this out there, so people are listening to what we're saying now.

Michele Ronson: All right. Great.

Ian Paget: If they will hear it, just saying, they will obviously put their hand up in the air and say, "I want it." Maybe I'll put a poll out afterwards, and yeah.

Michele Ronson: I can help you out with those questions. Absolutely. Then what we can do is then say, "If you're interested in this," or whatever, and I can talk you through that. You should take the Plan class!

Ian Paget: I should.

Michele Ronson: I have a discount code, also, for any of your listeners who want to take any of my classes through Curiosity Tank that ... Enter discount code logogeek25 for 25% off.

Ian Paget: Amazing.

Michele Ronson: I also teach, all of the user research regular classes at General Assembly, which is now global due to the Covid-19 shelter-in-place rules, so people can take my classes there, as well.

Ian Paget: Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. You know what, I think that's probably a good point to wrap up the interview, because I think we've provided a really good introduction into user research, and just the pure approach of having specific questions to ask to find out specific information. As obvious as that might sound, that's what I've got out of this.

Yeah, in terms of testing, you backed up what Philip said. That you can use these online tools. He said something very similar, but it's the questions. That's the hardest thing. I know we could do another probably like 10 hour-long podcast on that topic alone.

You definitely need to do that product. If nothing like that exists out there, which I would doubt it would, if you could put that together, I'll help promote it, and we can have a joint collaboration. But yeah, let's see what people say. Anyone who's listening to this now, if this is a product of interest, it doesn't exist at the moment, but if it were something that you wanted Michele to put together, special for logo designers, that would be amazing. I would like that, so let's see what the feelers are like.

But Michele, it's been amazing to chat with you. I feel that we've only really scraped the surface on the topic, but I will steer people towards your training course. Thank you for putting that promo code together. I'll link to that in the show notes, so that people can find it. But otherwise, Michele, thank you so much for your time. It's been great to chat with you.

Michele Ronson: Thank you so much. Happy to also share that I have a monthly-ish user research newsletter called Feel Your Curiosity, that's super fun. Let's see where this goes. This-

Ian Paget: Yeah, let's see what happens.

Michele Ronson: This is a perfect example of improv.

Ian Paget: I think it's great idea. Yeah, it's funny. Until you start talking about these things, you don't really see the need for it. But like I said, the way that I see it is that you can take a service that's, say, around the $1,000 mark. I think if you was to add into your logo design service things like trademark checks with a lawyer, things like the initial market research at the beginning, and then proper user testing, that would take you to that 10,000-plus price point.

Because I think it makes a massive difference, because you go from thinking that this will be right to knowing that this will actually perform in the marketplace. That has so much value to companies that are very serious. I've always thought that you would need to recruit someone like yourself to do that, and I mean, obviously people can do that. But if there was the tools, training materials, if there was a reference book of some kind, it would allow you to do it yourself.

It's a priceless service. I reckon that there would be quite a big demand out there for that type of thing. I'd absolutely love that, but let's see what the feelers are.

Anyway let's wrap up the interview.

Michele Ronson: I don't know if you could do it, it would be like saying ... Well, let's wrap there. Thanks so much. Let's keep talking-

Ian Paget: Yeah, let's keep talking.

Michele Ronson: ... I loved this time. Thank you for having me, Ian.