Formulate better hypothesesFor a more effective Abductive Design

Carmen Brion | @Tea_monsterUX Oxford and DOPM | 10-05-2016

Abductive design takes the best guess

Abductive Reasoning

● Starts with an incomplete set of observations

● Forms hypotheses making a prediction based on the information you have at the moment

● Goes from an observation to a theory that frames the most likely explanation for the observation

Contrary to popular opinion - Sherlock Holmes rarely, if ever, deduces anything. He may occasionally induce something, but most of the time he infers the best explanation from his observations. Source

Picture by Graham

Hypotheses make design research collaborative and targeted

Facilitates teams to:

● Discuss and align about the problems to solve

● Separate assumptions from facts

Picture by James Stencilowsky

Where hypotheses fit within the design framework?

Formulating hypotheses

It is not an easy task

Picture by Markus Spiske

This is not a hypothesis, it is just a description of how pagination works.

If online shoppers use pagination then they will have more items to explore

If online shoppers use pagination then they the likelihood of buying increase

If online shoppers use pagination then they will have different pages of items to explore

This is not a hypothesis, states a fact and it is not worth investigating

This is a hypotheses but uses a solution as independent variable and it’s too vague

Poor hypotheses are worse that no hypotheses

Like poor research, give teams a false sense of going in the right direction.

Bad hypotheses lead to

● Designing the wrong experiments● Ambiguous data coming out of the

research ● Results are difficult to interpret and

translate into outcomesPicture by Quinn Dombrowski

To learn to formulate good hypotheses

We need to go back to the scientific method

Picture by Lefteris Heretakis

How to make hypotheses sound

The good hypotheses:

1. Are simple and unambiguous2. Have a dependent and an

independent variables3. State a clear, unique relationship

between these 2 variables, based on some evidence/guess

4. Are testable, measurable, falsifiable and positive

Anyone reading the hypotheses should be able to understand the context and clearly interpret the results.

Picture by Gerry Lauzon

Pagination is a solution and this limits the outcomes of the research

Diverge

Converge

Having the independent variable as the solution makes us converge too early and limits what we can find out in the research.

Converge

Diverge

Having the independent variable solution-free makes the research divergent. The results will help to understand the whys behind this relationship and define the solution that fits better.

If online shoppers use pagination then their likelihood of buying increases

If we give online shoppers a bigger amount of attractive items then their likelihood of buying will increase

Understand where you are in product development journey

Who is the audience? What are their problems/needs? How can we solve it? What’s the best solution?

Who are the personas?Are there potential new personas? What are the Job To Be Done?What are their key behaviours?

What are the personas problems?What are their pains and frustrations?

How can we solve these problems? What are the barriers and/or constraints?

How different solutions solve the problems? How the different solutions fit with the personas mental model?

Which solution is better? How is the chosen solution working? What is the impact to the personas?

Generative Research

Evaluative Research

“Find the root cause, don’t just put a plaster over the symptoms”

Generative research hypotheses templates

Audience Problems Solutions

We believe that [this persona(s)] are a potential new audience because of [this reason]

We believe that [this persona(s)] will behave this way because of [this reason]

We believe that [this persona(s)] with these goals have [this job to be done]

We believe that [this persona(s)] have [this problem] [achieving this goal] because of [this reason]

We believe that [this persona(s)] have [this pain/frustration] [achieving this goal] leading to this [consequence]

We believe that [this problem] will be solve [with this solution] that will result in [this outcome]

We believe that [this persona(s)] using [this solution] will result in [this outcome]

We believe that [this solution] will result in [this change in the persona(s) mental model/behaviour]

“Ask the right questions to get insights that lead to the right solutions”

Evaluative research hypotheses templates

Solution

If we provide [this solution] then [this persona(s)] will be able to achieve [this outcome] and results in [this improvement]

If [this solution] is the best solution for [this persona(s)] to achieve [this outcome] as a results we will see [this improvement]

If-then hypotheses are more suited for evaluative research. However, we can improve them to make sure they meets the good hypotheses requirements.

Hypotheses will evolve as we run research and we learn more about the audience needs

We believe that fashion shoppers need more items in a category because they are looking for inspiration

We believe that fashion shoppers find it hard navigating a great amount of content

We believe that we can help fashion shoppers finding items they want to buy by relating their search to their lifestyle

If the Fashion category has lifestyle articles then the likelihood of fashion shoppers to add 1 or more items to the basket will increase a 20%

Abductive Design

Research Framework

Picture by Alex Alishevskikh

Steps to formulate, test and assess hypotheses

Determine the type of questions to answerDo we need evaluative or generative research?

Determine questionsWhat do we know, don’t know and what are the problems/constraints

Determine assumptions

Formulate hypothesesFollowing the guidelines

Prioritise the hypothesesWhich ones are more risky if they were wrong?

Design the researchTo assess the prioritised hypotheses

Run the research

Assess hypothesesValidate/invalidate hypotheses with the results of the research

Capture the learnings

1 32 4 5 6 7 8 9

Use Test Cards from the Value Proposition Design

● State assumption ● Outline the task to test the assumption● Think how you are going to measure

success● Indicate what success means

Will increase the likelihood of fashion shoppers finding items of their interest.

Having a lifestyle filter

will be asked to find items With a regular filter and with the lifestyle filter

Participants will search

A 20% more of items added to the basket than regular filters

Lifestyle filters should achieve

Number of items they add to the basket

Use Learning Cards from the Value Proposition Design

● State assumption● Explain what was observed for this

assumption during the research sessions● Extract the learning ● Indicate the action to take in line with the

learning

Will increase the likelihood of fashion shoppers finding items of their interest.

Having a lifestyle filter

that are more attractive but fashion shopper might not add them to the basket because they want to try it first.

Lifestyle filters generate Items

the non-linear user journey to get fashion shopper back for items they had shown interest on.

The user journey is not linear.Lifestyle filters

Review how to address

For listening :)

“Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation”

― Sebastian Thrun

References

Hypotheses-led designhttp://www.trikro.com/downloads/playbookhttps://medium.com/@mwambach1/hypotheses-driven-ux-design-c75fbf3ce7cc#.x5z35d1mmhttps://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/how-implement-hypothesis-driven-developmenthttp://www.slideshare.net/inusese/cindy-alvarez-embracing-hypothesis-driven-design

Scientific hypotheseshttp://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Hypothesis

If you use hypotheses, please let me know how it goes.

Please feedback:● What works and how it has impacted your work● Any tips or cool stuff you would like to share when putting hypotheses into practice● What is hard to put into practice and what problems you are encountering

I am planning to keep working to make this work better, so I am planning to keep iterating these ideas and practices. Your ideas and feedback are always welcome, the more brains the better problem solving!