About this course

Start date: 11-Aug-21

Summary

A research study requires careful choices. This course will help you decide what knowledge your organization needs, the purpose your users have, and the framework for a study. You will bring your knowledge from the other courses in the series to this capstone course, so that together we can set up and pursue your own study.

Yes, framing your study comes first. But in terms of learning how to do this, you need a deeper understanding of the components of this method. So it’s best if you take Listening Deeply and Thinking Styles (or Mental Model Diagrams as Opportunity Maps) first. Check the learning paths chart.

Whether it’s your first research study or your umpteenth, you can always use help clarifying what knowledge goals to aim for.

This course will lead you through the development of your own project framing. The live class sessions will include discussion and exercises meant to help you step through all the decisions. You’ll learn about how many participants to recruit to make sure patterns emerge in qualitative data. We’ll cover thinking styles as audience segmentation, and how you can start with hypothetical thinking styles if your organization doesn’t have them yet. Finding participants for your study is fraught with false leads, so we’ll outline some stronger methods for finding people who truly have a lot of experience with your scope, and who will perform well in a listening session.

When it comes to clarification, your stakeholders can probably use a better grasp on the uses of qualitative and problem space research.

You’ll also learn to show your stakeholders how your study will ultimately guide your product & service strategy. The homework between classes requires that you collaborate with your stakeholders to get the input you need to support them more deeply … because so many stakeholders don’t know how to ask for the knowledge they truly need. This course will help you speak more clearly to your stakeholders about what kind of research you can produce what kind of knowledge will come out of it.

You will learn how to:

• check your philosophy: constructivist, positivist
• clarify your framework: inductive, deductive, abductive
• choose your scope by getting outside the box of your organization
• narrow your scope by choosing a purpose containing rich thought
• find or hypothesize the thinking styles that are a priority
• gather candidates from stronger sources
• filter candidates through spoken screeners