What is left if we take all frameworks from research?

Resist the urge to do things the way you did before.

Illustrations in the post are by Adrian Johnson - I do not own any of them.

“If you want to paint, you're likely to begin by stretching canvas over a rectangular wooden frame and propping it up on an easel. Based solely on the tools selected, you've already exponentially narrowed what's possible, before a single drop of paint has made contact with the canvas.

We assume the equipment and format are part of the art form itself. Yet painting can be anything that involves the use of color on a surface for an aesthetic or communicative purpose. All other decisions are up to the artist.

(…) Rules obeyed unconsciously are far stronger than the ones set on purpose. And they are more likely to undermine the work.”

Rick Rubin - The Creative Act

Reading the words above for the first time made me stop, get the book down, and let my brain process for a few hours. Of course, the examples (and the whole book, to be fair) are centered on art, but the entire point behind the creative act is that everyone is creative - and creativity is everywhere, even in our work.

Good product research must follow a few guidelines. It must serve a purpose, which is to help someone make a decision (usually a business or design decision). It also must have a clear question to which it must find answers to - or a hypothesis that it should (in)validate (they can be the same, just different points of view). Unlike art, which can exist only to externalize the feelings or thoughts of the maker, we do have to answer questions with our research that go far beyond the ones we would like to answer, personally. We all work for companies, after all.

But apart from the guidelines of the results themselves, the process does not need to follow rules. At least not ones pre-established by other people, rules written in the corners of the web by people who consider themselves more important than they are. The frameworks.

Just like artists, masters of craft, we should be able to observe how other professionals come to their answers and reflect on what works within our own craft. Absorb and separate what's useful. Construct our process by testing, feeling, and researching ourselves - a meta-research, if you will.

Blindly following formulas is not going to make any work innovative, and as we progress in our craft, I believe it's our job to let go of old rules and transform the way we interact with data and people. When we let go of all we feel is necessary to create our deliverables, we are finally able to reach the core and start over again, recreating the path and doing our jobs in ways that surpass the rules we were taught.

Because if we take all processes, rules, and frameworks from our product research, what is left?

For me, it's the genuine desire to carefully listen to the users.