Avoiding Arctic Expeditions: Ways to do research together
summary
Claims that small daily studies beat rare “Arctic expeditions”: quick, team-led field work uncovers many small insights rather than one big reveal. Shows a failed cafeteria test where 350 users apparently prefer a new dashboard but selection and leading questions invalidate it. Prescribes four concrete moves: check hygiene (deliberate questions, recruit target users), go to the field and listen with empathy, analyze with affinity clustering and broaden with user story maps, then present evidence (video/photos) live to stakeholders and feed the next iteration.
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chapters (11)
- 0:00Introduction and setup
- 1:59Terrible user research demo
- 4:27Casual vs scientific extremes
- 8:44Four tips to improve research
- 9:05Tip 1: Check hygiene
- 13:18Tip 2: Go to the field
- 19:46Field research mindset
- 20:34Tip 3: Make sense together
- 28:47Iterative research process
- 30:33Making research a habit
- 31:15User research as ice core
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