A research reading list

We're often asked for recommendations on books about research and insight. Here are 12 that we think are great (and yes, we wrote 2 of them!).

Introduction/Overview

• Yvonne McGivern, The Practice of Market Research: An Introduction

A good introduction to the entire field of Market Research.

• Paul Hague, Market Research in Practice

A pragmatic explanation of how to use research.

• Stephen Hampshire, Your Customer Survey

This short book is designed to help you make or review the key decisions to make sure you've getting the most out of your customer research. Apologies for the self-promotion!

• Nigel Hill, Greg Roche, & Rachel Allen, Customer Satisfaction

If you want a step by step, thoroughly referenced, guide to how we approach customer satisfaction research, this is it. A little long in the tooth now (we’re planning a new edition). The fundamentals haven’t changed, but take what it says about web surveys with a pinch of salt.

 Design research

• Jon Kolko, Well Designed

A useful explanation of what designers actually do, and how research informs that process.

• Karen Holtzblatt & Hugh Beyer, Contextual Design

This book, and the approach it details, is meaty and not for the faint hearted. The foundation of a lot of user research practice.

Qualitative Research

• Wendy Gordon, Mindframes

Kindle only, sadly, but a great book from a legendary qualitative researcher explaining how she thinks.

•  Erika Hall, Just Enough Research

A thorough, opinionated, explanation of how qualitative user research works.

•  Sean Hall, This Means This, This Means That

My favourite book on semiotics, cutting through the really arcane stuff.

•  Ideo, Method Cards

A useful resource in terms of inspiring new ideas for learning about customers. You can find a PDF version with a bit of creative Googling (not that I’m endorsing that, you understand).

•  Gerald Zaltman, How Customers Think

Interesting book looking at the psychology of qualitative research, although I wouldn’t follow Zaltman’s approach to the letter.

Quantitative research

• Roger Tourangeau, Lance J. Rips, & Kenneth Rasinski, The Psychology of Survey Response

The only book I know of that examines in detail what cognitive science has to tell us about the way people understand questions, remember experiences, and choose how to respond to surveys. Technical, but might change how you think about surveys for good.