topic: designresearch101

description; ?>

design research 101: you don't have to look at all the data. given a compromise between examining and categorising every transcript, photo, answer or looking at the data in different ways, pick manipulation & representation over organization every time.

Having lots of data points doesn't mean you have greater understanding: it simply means you have lots of data points and more chances to prove a statement true or false. Having fully organized data is great if you want to test conclusions, but it's easier to check hypotheses than to find a new, more powerful, more insightful way of looking at the phenomenon being studied. Finding a good explanation for behavior usually involves multiple rounds of trying to make sense of something. That takes time.

If you're short on time, forget trying to organize everything and spend more time interpreting and deriving conclusions from the data. After all, that's what you were hired for, isn't it?

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