In this week’s Design Podcast, I sit down with David Farkas, associate director of user experience at EPAM and co-author of the forthcoming book "UX Research." We talk about his book, why everyone should learn to conduct research, and how to open up your mind to ask the right questions.

Farkas and his co-author Brad Nunnally also are teaching a series of online courses:

Learning UX Research: Understanding Methods and Techniques—May 8 or July 10, 2017.
Learning UX Research: Analyzing Data and Sharing Results—May 22 or July 24, 2017.

David Farkas on How to Approach User Research

O'Reilly Media spreads the knowledge of innovators. At O’Reilly, a big part of our business is paying attention to what’s new and interesting in the world of technology. We have a pretty good record at having anticipated some of the big technology developments in recent history. For instance, we launched the first commercial Web site, GNN, in 1993; we organized the meeting at which the term “open source” was first adopted; we were early investors in Blogger, which helped launch the blogging revolution; and more recently, our Web 2.0 conference launched a world-wide meme. We call this predictive sense the “O’Reilly Radar.” And while we’re certainly not always right, we are, at least, good at making interesting guesses.

Our methodology is simple: we draw from the wisdom of the alpha geeks in our midst, paying attention to what’s interesting to them, amplifying these weak signals, and seeing where they fit into the innovation ecology. Add to that the original research conducted by our Research team, and you start to get a good picture of what the technology world is thinking about.

David Farkas on How to Approach User Research

O'Reilly Radar