User logic

A conversation with Rebekka Høy Biegel, Consultant at ChangePilot, Aarhus, Denmark

 

 

The users don’t drive anything! What matters is understanding what matters to people. This is what Rebekka calls user logic.

 

User logic is all about seeing things from the users perspective. It is a human-centered approach to design and innovation that has its roots in anthropology and ethnography. At its base is the acknowledgement that users are also human beings - you don’t wake up as a user! The goal of practicing user logic is to formulate the right and relevant questions for innovative processes, and to do that you must have a deeper insight in what drives the people who are going to use the product, process or service you are designing.

 

There are three phases in exploring user logic. First, you scope the projects. How many resources do you have? What do you want to explore? Also, decide which methods and persons are relevant for the research. Second, you collect data by observing and interviewing the selected people using the chosen methods. Third, you formulate the main insights by analyzing and categorizing all the data from the second phase.

A methodology Rebekka mentions as a frame for choosing the methods for this process is triangulation, which is the combination of different perspectives, for exploring the same thing and coming to the same conclusion. It is a means of heightening the quality of the research process and can be used to support the relevance of the possibly unspoken needs of the users that appear as main insights during the user logic process. The way Rebekka uses it is, for example, by exploring via making interviews and observations on different locations and doing it with more than one person.

After what Rebekka defines as the user logic process comes the creative development. User logic serves as the fundament for the innovation process.