We knew we had to employ a quantitative approach based on some form of statistical analysis.

At the same time, we needed more than just the devices employees used or not.

We knew from initial interviews that there were other factors involved like the type of work employees did or their position in the organization.

This meant we needed to identify which other variables were influencing these device needs. We needed to complement our approach with some sort of qualitative insight.

To make sense of this complexity we created a system that allowed us to clearly define our hypotheses and test them with real data.

This culminated in a research strategy based on two main references:

Daniel Pidcock’s Atomic UX Research

Dan Nessler’s Revamped Double Diamond

Atomic UX Research

This recent paradigm borrows from the Atomic Design framework and is defined by Daniel as “the act of breaking UX knowledge down into its constituent parts”.

This model breaks information down into four layers:

Experiments are types of research activities conducted. These can be any of the research methods you know (e.g. surveys, diary studies, usability testing, etc.) Facts are objective observations gathered during research, devoid of bias and covert assumptions. Insights, on the other hand, are the interpretations made by researchers about the facts they found. Finally, conclusions are the actions that researchers suggest should be taken based on the above line of reasoning.

The most important benefit of this perspective is that “Atomic UX Research forces evidence-based thinking” where all the different steps of the process are inter-connected.

This step-by-step approach allowed for a solid line of reasoning to frame our outputs.

Revamped Double Diamond

To compliment this structure, the Revamped Double Diamond placed the activities of each phase of our project in context.