The big idea: A UCD plan turns curiosity into an inquiry you can actually run. It states the research questions, the methods that will answer them, the data you will collect and the design decisions that data will settle.
Without it you collect whatever is easy to collect, and then discover it answers nothing.
Four links, and every one has to hold. Step through the three worked plans — the fourth box is the one students leave empty.
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You have a fixed number of hours and a real deadline. A plan is how you spend those hours on the questions that will change the design, rather than on the questions that are comfortable to ask.
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Will not earn marks
- "What do people think of my product?" — no user group, no task
- "Is my design good?" — cannot come back the other way
- "How can I make the best kettle?" — too big to answer in four hours
- "Do people like green?" — changes no decision you have to make
Will
- "How do users with weak grip fill and pour a kettle?"
- "Which step of self-checkout do first-time users fail at?"
- "Why do students stop carrying a refill bottle after a month?"
- Each names a user group, a task, and could be answered wrongly
Four tests every research question has to pass
Does it name a user group?
Not "people" — a group you could go and find this week. Parents of under-fives. Nurses on a night shift. Students who cycle to school.
Does it name a task?
Something the user DOES, with a beginning and an end. Filling a kettle. Paying at a machine. Getting a child into a car seat.
Could the answer surprise you?
If you already know the answer, you are not researching — you are collecting evidence for a decision you made. Say what would surprise you before you start.
Would a different answer change the design?
Name the decision. If nothing changes whichever way the data falls, cut the question and spend the hours on one that matters.
See how examiners mark answers
Access past paper questions with model answers. Learn exactly what earns marks and what doesn't.
| If your question is about… | Use… | Because… |
|---|---|---|
| What users actually do, step by step | User observation | People cannot reliably report their own behaviour |
| The place the product is used | Field research | The environment and the workarounds are only visible there |
| Why someone behaves that way | Interviews | Reasons, history and feeling need room to come out |
| How many, how often, how strongly | Questionnaires | Only a large sample gives you numbers you can trust |
| What users disagree about, and what they call things | Focus groups | Disagreement surfaces when users hear each other |
Two methods, not one: Every method has a blind spot. Observation shows you WHAT happens and never WHY; interviews give you WHY and are unreliable about WHAT.
A good plan pairs a method that watches with a method that asks, in that order — watch first, then ask about what you saw.
What a plan actually contains: Research question. Method. Who, how many, where and when. What you will record. How you will analyse it. The design decision it will settle.
Six lines per question. A plan longer than a page is usually a plan nobody will follow.
How this is tested — constructing a user-centred research plan and defending its parts. It comes up two ways:
Paper 1 — multiple choice
- Pick the research method that suits a stated question.
- Identify the weakness in a given research question.
Paper 2 — analysing a product
- Construct a plan for investigating a named product's users.
- Explain why two methods are used rather than one.
The trap: Naming a method and stopping. "I will interview users" says nothing about who, how many, what you will ask, or what you will do with the answers — and a markscheme built on a plan has a mark for each of those.
A company is redesigning the self-service coffee machine used in hospital waiting rooms. Construct a user-centred research plan for the first week of the project.
Model answer plan
See the mark-by-mark plan — for / against / judgement, with marking guidance — in study mode.