How to measure intangibles?

Often our research problem revolves around intangible constructs – quality, usablity, delight, desire, emotions, propensity to buy, preferences.

How do you measure such things? Do you just ask people?

It can be too overwhelming to even beginning.

They are too abstract and broad for us to measure & gather any useful data.

So, you break it down.

The first step is to break it down into it’s sub-components & find how each component plays a role in forming the construct/research problem. This is what it means to “drill down” into a problem.

For example –

Quality can be broken down into performance, features, reliability, conformance to standards, durability, serviceability, and aesthetics.

Similarly, usability can be divided into system effectiveness, efficiency, and user satisfaction (following ISO 9241-11)

When you break these constructs in this way, it removes ambiguity from your research and gives you a clearer map of measuring & gathering data.

You realize the dragon you were so afraid of was actually… a rabbit.

And it’s fun playing with a rabbit, isn’t it?

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