BlackHägen Design conducts user research using passive and interactive discovery methods to elicit user aspirations, identify latent needs and unmet efficiencies, and characterize usage scenarios. Whenever possible, we immerse our team of analytical researchers and designers in the usage environment of a product or system, known as contextual inquiry or ethnography. By passively observing users in context, we record workflow metrics, characterize the relationships of associated devices and actors within a system, and finish by interviewing users with advanced participatory research tools.
The powerful insights discovered with these qualitative research techniques are then translated into robust requirements and actionable design initiatives that create a foundation for innovation. This empirical methodology is considered one of the foundational building blocks of a good usability engineering process, establishing testable usability inputs for downstream formative studies culminating in an FDA-required human factors engineering report.
- Domestic & International Contextual Inquiry
- Simulated Workflow Studies
- Projective Mapping
- Participatory Configuration/Velcro Modeling
- Card Sorting
- Cognitive Walkthrough
- Virtual/Augmented Reality Testing
- Insight Translation & Synthesis Workshops