Reasons to use hypotheses for your design research, where hypotheses fit within Design Thinking/Lean UX, a framework to formulate stronger hypotheses and some hypotheses examples.

1. FORMULATE STRONGER HYPOTHESES
FOR A MORE EFFECTIVE ABDUCTIVE DESING RESEARCH
Photo credit: Andrew Filer
Carmen Brion @Tea_monster
UX Camp Brighton 2016

2. ❖ Hypotheses come from the best
information available
❖ Often need an educated guess
based on some evidence
Abductive reasoning
✴ starts with an incomplete set of
observations
✴ proceeds to the likeliest possible
explanation
Why Abductive Design Research?

3. Multidisciplinary design teams
and stakeholders
❖ align on the problem space and
its level of complexity
❖ separate assumptions from facts
❖ prioritise and select assumptions
to validate
Hypotheses make design research
✴ more targeted
✴ collaborative
Hypotheses guide design teams

4. Where these hypotheses fit within the design framework?
UnderstandObserve Define
Ideate
Prototype/MVP
DISCOVER
DEFINE PROBLEM
DEFINITION
DEVELOP
IM
PLEM
ENT
Re-define Test
THINK MAKE CHECK
LEARN
LEAN UX
DESING THINKING
Validate/Invalidate/Reframe
Hypotheses
Hypotheses
2 1

5. ❖ Lead to aimless research
❖ Makes it hard to validate
assumptions
❖ Give teams a false sense of
going in the right direction
❖ Designs don’t solve problems
for the business or the customer
Bad hypotheses lead to
aimless design
Photo credit: Quinn Dombrowski
✴ Hypotheses are tricky to
formulate
✴ Poor hypotheses are as bad or
worse than no hypotheses

6. Formulating sound hypotheses:
purposeful abductive design research
We need to go back to the scientific method
Photo credit: Lefteris Heretakis

7. ❖ It is simple and unambiguous
❖ Has an independent variable and
a dependent variable
❖ States a clear relationship between
these two variables, based on some
evidence
❖ It is testable, measurable, falsifiable
and positive
Photo credit: Gerry Lauzon
What makes a hypothesis sound?

8. Photo credit: Markus Spiske
Adductive Design Research Framework
1. DEFINE ASSUMPTIONS
2. DEFINE THE PROBLEMS TO SOLVE
3. FORMULATE THE HYPOTHESES
4. DEFINE THE RESEARCH TO ASSESS
THE HYPOTHESIS
5. RUN THE RESEARCH
6. ASSESS THE RESULTS OF THE
RESEARCH

9. WHO IS THE AUDIENCE? WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS? WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION?
GENERATIVE RESEARCH
EVALUATIVE RESEARCH
Worth considering when formulating a hypothesis
“Find the root cause,
don’t just put a plaster over
the symptoms”
• Impact of the solution to the business?
• Will the audience use/pay for this
solution?
• Is there a sustainable market for this
solution?
• Who is the audience?
• Job to be done by the audience?
• Potential new segments?
• What are their behaviours?
• What are the business problems?
• What does the business aim to achieve
with the new solution?
• Audience problems?
• Audience pains and frustrations?
• Do solutions solve the problems?
• How solutions fit with the audience
mental models?
• How does the solution meet
the business goals?
• How is the solution working?
• Impact to the audience?
• Which solution is better?

10. Photo credit: Markus Spiske
Formulating hypotheses is tricky
➡ This is not a hypothesis.
It is just a description of a design feature.
If we offer pagination to online shoppers then they will have more
items to explore
Bad hypothesis
If pagination is a more efficient way to find items then online
shoppers will find items quicker using pagination than using infinite
scrolling
Good hypothesis
➡ A way to formulate a hypothesis for this design feature.
Ask why having items to explore it is important to users.

11. WHO IS THE AUDIENCE? WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS? WHAT IS THE BEST SOLUTION?
GENERATIVE RESEARCH
EVALUATIVE RESEARCH
Different ways to write hypotheses
“Ask the right questions
to get insights that lead to the
right solutions“
We believe that [this people are
a potential (new) audience]
because of [this reason]
We believe that [this audience
will behave this way] because of
[this reason]
We believe that [this audience
with these goals] have [this job
to be done]
We believe that [this audience have this
problem achieving this goal] because of
[this reason]
We believe that [this audience have this
pain/frustration] leading to [this
consequence]
We believe that [this audience using
this solution] will results in [this
outcome]
We believe that [this solution] will
results in [this change in the audience
mental model/behaviour]
If we provide [this solution] then [this
audience will be able to achieve this
outcome] leading to [this improvement]
If [this solution the best solution for the
audience to achieve this outcome] then
[we will see this improvement]

12. References
The Real Lean Startup Book
http://www.trikro.com/downloads/playbook
Hypotheses-led design
❖ https://medium.com/@mwambach1/hypotheses-driven-ux-
design-c75fbf3ce7cc#.d7rhwimep
❖ https://www.thoughtworks.com/insights/blog/how-implement-
hypothesis-driven-development
❖ http://www.slideshare.net/inusese/cindy-alvarez-embracing-
hypothesis-driven-design
Scientific hypotheses
❖ http://www.wikihow.com/Write-a-Hypothesis

13. For listening :)
“Few ideas work on the first try. Iteration is key to innovation”
― Sebastian Thrun
Photo credit: Paul Downey