Introduction

The world is now gearing towards a people-centered design approach in problem-solving. With each day it becomes clearer that research is not just about problem-solving, but narrowing down to the specific context of the users /customers.

To understand your customer, you will need more than answers on a feedback survey. Thus, specific research methods more suited for solving problems and proffering solutions, like Generative research have been developed. Generative research can help you understand your customers’ lifestyles. With this knowledge, you can uncover and solve previously unknown problems.

 In this post we will focus on Generative research, the instances where it can be applied, some examples, how Formplus can help with generative research and lots more.

Whether you are a designer, researcher, or product manager, this article will provide you with a comprehensive overview of Generative research and its applications, helping you to better understand how to leverage this approach to drive innovation and create better user experiences.

What is Generative Research?

Generative research is a qualitative research method designed to help uncover users’ problems and find viable solutions. The aim is to delve deep into the lives of your customers in other to understand their behavior and beliefs in other to craft solutions to their needs or challenges. This process often involves interviews with customers, exploratory study, and observation of your customers. 

Generative research is a form of research methodology that seeks a deep understanding of people’s pain points, behaviors motivations, and preferences.

The idea behind this concept is to generate or understand your customers on a deeper level, in terms of their personal daily experiences. This form of research gives insight into a person’s identity beyond the facade they present to the general public.

The idea or goal behind this form of research is that the more you know about an individual, the better you can develop products or services that would solve problems they encounter. This is because knowledge about the people you seek to serve with your products, helps you identify opportunities for new products and helps you innovate on existing products. And the best way to generate new ideas and opportunities is to include the people you are building for in the design process.

Generative design can be applied to a variety of fields from marketing, to product design, and arts. social sciences and the like. It is mostly used to shed light on limited knowledge and can result in the development of new theories, frameworks, and new products.

Read Also – User Research: Definition, Methods, Tools, and Guide

Why is Generative Research Important?

Generative research is important because of the following reasons.

• It plays a vital role in product design and development because, without a deep understanding of the motivations that drives the users of your product, there is the risk of building products that no one will want or need.

Read – Product Feature Research: How to Design & Test

• It shows us the reason behind the actions of people, and their thought patterns. This takes us out of the products or beyond a product into the lives of the people the products were created for. The result is a solution(product/service) created from the problems real people are facing in real-time.
• Generative research creates opportunities for new insight and ideas. This is so because the areas where this form of research is applied are not areas where adequate studies have been conducted.
• Effective problem-solving is one of the results of generative research. This is because generative research focuses on exploring the perceptions, motivations, and pain points of different individuals. This in turn highlights barriers, and opportunities that would not have been discovered without this form of research.
• Lastly, generative research fuels innovation, as the deep insight it provides, can reveal opportunities for innovation that would have been overlooked or undiscovered if not for generative research.

In a nutshell, a generative reach is a vital tool for creating new insights, exposing the root cause of challenges, and giving rise to effective solutions tailored to solve people’s problems on a case-by-case basis.

Generative vs Evaluative Research

Generative and evaluative research are two different types of research methodologies with distinct purposes and goals.

Generative research, as discussed earlier, is a method of research that aids researchers in having a deeper knowledge of users for the sole purpose of understanding them in other to develop custom-fit solutions, discover opportunities for innovations, and expand the use of a previously developed product or service.

Evaluative research, on the other hand, just like the name implies measures the impact or effectiveness or result from the use of a product or service. The goal is to check if a product worked as intended or if a product provided the solution to the problem the way it was designed to.

Evaluative research is quantitative by design and entails data collection on specific products or services. The goal is to measure results, in other to confirm the effectiveness and make recommendations in areas where a product or service failed to meet the aim it was designed for. While generative research is more concerned with the user’s overall experience in other to design custom-fit solutions. The focus of generative is usually uncharted waters.

In summary, both kinds of research are useful and can be combined to develop excellent solutions to complex situations.

Explore – Evaluative Research Design: Examples, Methods & Types

Types of Generative Research

• Focus Groups

This involves bringing together a small group of people to share and discuss their feelings and opinions on a specific topic. Most times these focus groups represent the different types of customers that are interested in your brand. By conversing with them, you gain insight into the challenges faced by them in different aspects of their lives.

• Literature Review

This type of generative research involves exploring books published on a particular topic. This literature is usually reviewed with a team of people. There are publications for almost every industry, so the process of review helps you gather data without necessarily surveying the topics covered.

The insights gathered from these books are utilized to create solutions to the problems being faced by your users. 

• User Interviews

Having one conversation with your customers is an ideal way to carry out research. With one on one interviews, trust is built and engagement with your users thrives. User interviews help you gather as much information as possible.

Talking with your clients one-on-one is a great way to conduct research. With one-on-one interviews, you can better build trust and rapport with your clients.

• Contextual Inquiry

This involves studying users of your products or services within the scope of their environment, in other to understand the specific areas in which the products or services you created are being used. The idea is to meet your users in their personal space in other to closely monitor and understand their motivations, habits, attributes, and customs/culture.

• Field Studies and Observations

This type of generative study observes how customers interact with your product or service and gives you insight into their behavior. The data gathered here helps you to create custom-fit products that best suit the context in which they use the product. These field studies could be conducted physically or via online communities or forums where your interests are being discussed.

• Diary Studies

Diary studies help participants keep tabs on their behaviors and the various ways that they interact with your brand. Here you ask your participants to write down their pain points and how it evolves. This way you can get real-time insight into the progress recorded with the use of your products or service.

How to Conduct Generative Research

• Define The Research Objective

The goal of generative research is to uncover hidden challenges. Hence your objective could be to find out who your customers are, and the undiscovered pain points, that they experience while using or interacting with your products. The point here is to outline a set of objectives that you want to achieve with your research, this would serve as a sort of recipe or guide to help you along in your research.

• Choose a Research Method

The next step is to decide on the best research method suitable for quality data collection. Understand and evaluate the various method or types of generative research and select the best one you would be comfortable with.

• Recruit Participants

In this step, you recruit the ideal participants for your research by sourcing them in the channels that your target persona( people who represent your target audience) usually frequent. The participants can be recruited via your social media channels, advertisements, or through forms embedded on your website.

This means when you choose to recruit your respondents, just make sure that they are representative of your target audience and willing to participate in your research.

• Set up a Research Plan

This step would keep you on track and help you adhere to timelines allocated for each stage of your research. Here you decide how you want to conduct your research, the parameters you would use to select or recruit participants, what kind of incentives you will offer, the type or method you will use, and the length of your research.

• Conduct the research

Now that you have a solid plan, here is the time to go to work. You can now carry out your research following your already prepared plan. While conducting your research be sure to administer it in a way that allows participants to share their input without any inhibitions.

• Analyze your Data

Once the research has been concluded, the data gathered should now be analyzed to pinpoint themes, patterns, trends, and insight. The analysis should be guided by the objectives of the research already outlined from the beginning.

• Apply the data

In this phase you use the results of the data gathered to proffer solutions to pain points outlined by your analysis.

• Report/Share your Findings

Here you report or share your findings with stakeholders clearly and concisely.

The report should include the research questions, the participants involved, the method of research, and the results or findings of your research gleaned by analyzing the data correctly.

 In summary, conducting generative research involves careful planning, execution, and analysis. By following the steps outlined, researchers can get new insights and the development of effective solutions to complex real-life problems.

How Formplus Can Help with Generative Research Projects

Formplus is a data collection software that can make your generative research a hassle-free one and help you conduct your research by allowing you access freely our array of templates to help with your research. All our forms are code free and can be edited to allow you to include different types of questions, from multiple choice to Likert scale, and open-ended questions, in other to help you gather qualitative data.

Once you are done your customizing your data collection forms. It can be shared in real-time with your participants via a link, QR codes, or by simply embedding it on your website.

This automates the whole research process, as the forms help you collect data from users in a structured and well-defined manner.

With Formplus, you can collaborate with your team members effectively in real-time irrespective of their location, that way you can all provide your input and create solutions to complex problems faster.

Our advanced data analysis feature analyzes the data gathered in microseconds based on the parameters you have outlined. This aids you in identifying patterns, themes, and deep insight from your research with minimal effort from your end.

Formplus provides your users with optimum security to ensure that any data gathered with our software is secure and can only be accessed by the authorized individual.

In summary, using Formplus would automate the data collection process for your generative research, analyze data, save time, eliminate errors, maintain data security, and ensure that researchers can free up time to focus on identifying new opportunities.

Conclusion

Generative research is a study that helps researchers gather real-world challenges from users who interact with their products or services, by understanding the context in which the products purchased are used as well as the perceptions and pain points experienced when using a product.

The goal is to develop solutions tailored to solve the problems uncovered with the research. It is useful in product development marketing and user experience design.

It is an essential tool for businesses that want to create solutions suited to the exact need of their target audience.

With Formplus, an automated data collection software the process of generative research is a seamless one with custom-made solutions for data collection, and analysis, reporting, all carefully put together to help researchers carry out their study with ease.