You Need More Enough
The 2024 Mule Books edition of Just Enough Research is here! (Rolling out internationally over the next couple of weeks, so if you don’t see it in your local online store, nag them about ISBN 979-8-9893587-1-7 until it appears.)
It looks and feels fantastic. So velvety. Even more orange. The cover is designed to really pop when you display it casually on a shelf behind your head. Everyone else on the video conference will know you are not to be trifled with.
For those of you who already have a previous edition
Thank you. You are awesome. I love you. Thanks for recommending it so often. I really appreciate it. Sorry the audio book is not done yet [gestures broadly].
If you already like it, I think you’ll like the new format even more. Expense a dozen. Do a bookclub.
For those of you who have yet to read Just Enough Research
Whatever your role, if you need to work with other people to make design, technology, and business decisions, JER will help you. It’s often referred to as a “user research” book, but this compact little hunk of words covers:
Why people with power object to asking questions (fear mostly)
How to overcome those objections (not with more data)
What a functional, productive, collaborative approach looks like
Understanding your organization as the context for (often whim-based) decision-making
Yes, and user and customer and competitive research
How to choose a research activity based on what you need to learn
Why it’s probably not a survey
How to deal with the bias towards quantitative data
And so much more.
There’s no dogma. There’s no one right tool or process or method. It’s about a mindset that will help you ask the right questions at the right time, using the appropriate tools, so you can spend less time being wrong. Truly astonishing how much money organizations set on fire because they are committed to their baseless assumptions.
Together, we can fight the nonsense.
For specialist researchers who are skeptical of the whole “just enough” thing
I get it. You’re trying to make a case for more research in an environment where you are probably being asked to justify your existence on a daily basis, even after they hire you. And yeah I’ve seen my book misused as an excuse for a weak or sloppy practice by people who apparently didn’t read it.
The key is “enough.” The goal of applied research in a business/organization is to contribute to better quality decisions, not to uncover new knowledge for its own sake. The standard is whether the work is ethical and effective, meaning whether the people making decisions learn something useful to them about the world in time to apply those insights towards good goals.
Most organizations have no idea how much or what type of information is needed to make decisions. Often goals are unclear and contradictory. And there’s a process for everything except making truly evidence-based decisions. Leaders don’t know what questions to ask and in many cases see asking questions at all as a sign of weakness or insubordination. It doesn’t matter how much research you do if the people in charge ignore anything that doesn’t support what they’re going to do anyways.
My book is on your side. The more everyone in an organization feels like a partner in the process—even if they aren’t a direct participant in the research activities—the more likely they will be open to listening and learning. Demystifying the work may feel like giving up power, but it’s impossible to do the work when critical thinking isn’t valued and collaboration isn’t happening.
And if you yourself are making the transition from academia, I recommend Practical Ethnography: A Guide to Doing Ethnography in the Private Sector by Sam Ladner, PhD.
In conclusion
Just Enough Research 2024 is $24.* That’s barely the cost of two sandwiches, or one banana, in a major U.S. city. Reading the entire thing takes less time (and provides more utility and satisfaction) than watching the Zack Snyder cut. It still has more centaurs and a better Brexit joke than any other design research book out there. Honestly, a deal.
Feel free to email me with questions.
* The list price. We do what we can.
