Happy Holidays from Lextant

by Lextant Team on December 19, 2011

Happy Holidays from our family to yours. We hope you have a great holiday season and a happy new year.

New Year, New Adventures

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In 2012, Lextant will add 8000 sq. ft. to our Design Research facilities. LextantLabs will now offer new research capabilities, state of the art capture, eye tracking and streaming technologies, and a unique multi-purpose room that can be used for transportation, large format consumer goods and retail research. We are excited bring this unique offer to the Midwest. Keep an eye out in 2012 for more updates on LextantLabs.

Innovation Adventures

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Thanks to our client partners, our user-experience research and design programs took us on many innovation adventures across the globe in 2011. We wanted to share some unique and fun things we’ve learned.

Lextant: Happy Holidays 2011 from Lextant on Vimeo.

Lextant Learnings - A final farewell from one of Lextant's Fall Interns

by Jeff Turkelson on December 19, 2011

It’s my last day as a design research intern here at Lextant. For the past three months, I’ve helped the research teams analyze data and translate our findings into something understandable to clients. It’s hard to find fault in my experience. In short, I loved it here.

The breadth of my internship was considerable—I spent as much time in Excel as I have in InDesign. I’ve sat in on group discussions with participants and workshops with clients. I would spend some days in the production room and other days musing over topics like “learnability” as it relates to UXD. In a way it’s ironic that a relatively specialized field like design research would require such a diverse skillset. But I’m certainly not complaining. I’d like to think I’ve grown considerably in the past three months, due to the variety of work available to me.

There is a very deliberate effort to keep tabs on intern “wellness,” for a lack of a better term. Being asked, sincerely, if the work aligns with my interests, if I’m happy, struggling, etc. was a welcome gesture. In some companies, it’s rare to get that sort of treatment as a full-time employee, let alone as an intern. For someone to reach out like they did was very reassuring. If I had one regret, it would be that I failed to reach back. That I didn’t get to know some of the senior staff as much as I may have wanted is entirely on me. I couldn’t have asked for a more inviting culture.

I’m inclined to say that fall is the best season for an internship. After all, nothing turns a colleague into a friend faster than a holiday party. But regardless of the season, it’d be hard to feel excluded here. The community at Lextant is paradoxically both very welcoming and yet tightly-knit. I am lucky to have known them. And I will miss them.

User-Centered Research: A Panel Discussion

by Monica Weiler on December 16, 2011

IDSA Northern Ohio Chapter organized a panel discussion for their meeting on Dec 6, 2011 along with Balance Inc. The panel was moderated by Lextant’s own Marty Gage, Vice President of Design Research. Jim Couch, VP of Business Development at Lextant attended as well as myself, Monica Weiler, a User Experience Design Associate here at Lextant.

Panelists for the evening included:
Judy Riley - VP of Global Design, Moen
Jeff Hyde - Managing Director, Ideas in Focus
Dave Loomis - Director of Consulting Services, NACCO Industries
Linda Wagner - Director of Research, Carbon Design Group.

The evening’s topic was User-Centric Research and the trigger question used to stoke discussion was a quote by Henry Ford- “If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘a faster horse.’”

And so the questions arose: Can consumers lead us to innovative solutions or do they stifle creativity? Can you create a truly successful product experience without involving the end-user in the design process? Marty asked the panelists- “How do you define user-centered research”? One of the first definitions the panelists gave was simple- involving the end user in the design process. How do we go about involving the user in the design process? At what point do we involve them and how much? The panel discussed ethnographic research methods such as in-home observations, one-on-one in-depth interviews, using webcam to interview and to observe a typical day in the life of a user. One person mentioned they thought the researcher should be an advocate for the user’s voice throughout the design process. By the end of the discussion there was a general agreement that the users don’t necessarily inform us about what the product will ultimately look like or what technology components can accomplish it. However, the users definitely help inform and inspire design in sharing what their needs and aspirations are. The panel agreed that this type of user-centered approach to design has proven to create not just successful products but successful product experiences. There is a trend where large consumer product industries are investing more and more resources into user-centric research.

Design research and user experience research firms like Lextant are constantly developing innovative participatory methodologies in order to appropriately capture users aspirations and dreams for an ideal experience. This recent IDSA panel discussion seemed to reiterate the value and position of design research and user experience research in the competitive world of product design and development- today and for many more days to come.