General Assembly - User Experience Design - Week 02
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Week 2 roundup of User Experience Design course at General Assembly, London.
Session 03 - User Research
Section titled Session 03 - User ResearchObjectives
Section titled Objectives- Introduce the skills needed for effective interviewing
- Explain the benefits of contextual enquiry
- Cover techniques for ensuring unbiased interview questions
- Draft an interview discussion guide
Class Slides
Section titled Class SlidesIntroducing User Research
Section titled Introducing User Research- Social media has bred a culture of complaing making it easier for customers to openly converse with companies with their problems
- Users are experts in their problems but not experts in the solutions
- It’s important to keep a record of quotes both good and bad
- Unlike quantitate research that explains the what, user interviews offers the qualitative research that explains the why
Research Types
Section titled Research Types- Generative: utilised when a working with a new solution
- Evaluative: utilised when a solution already exists
Why Do The Research?
Section titled Why Do The Research?- High-risk to the business by not doing so
- Gives an objective view on the solution
- “You are not the user”
- Builds empathy with your potential or current users
Discover Habits
Section titled Discover Habits- Ask why, preferably 5 times
- Don’t assume you know why
- Ask questions
- People make up things when they can’t remember, find truths to acknowledge responses
Discover Workarounds
Section titled Discover Workarounds- How are they currently fixing their problem?
- What are they using?
- Why are they using this particular workaround? What works, what doesn’t?
Contextual Inquiry
Section titled Contextual Inquiry- Introduces the context to the task
- Unpacks all the other conditions that effect the process of completing a task
- Spread the sample research
User Interviews
Section titled User Interviews- Define goals of the research
- Understand business goals
- Their (stakeholders) needs
- Their assumptions
- Use a discussion guide
- Helps to keep the conversation flow going after a tangental discussion
- Enables a structured interview and gain the insights you are searching for
Interview Preperation
Section titled Interview Preperation- Record the interview if possible
- Enables playback for more focused note-taking
- Note-taking during the interview can be distracting and limits your concentration on the flow of the conversation
- If offering payment/reward for the interview, present before the interview commences
- This avoids giving the impression the participant needs to say the right things and impress
- Make them feel comfortable
- Interview with the users who will actually be using the product, not those who are at management or higher level
- Identify other stakeholders and collaborative services e.g.
- Government
- Council
- Charity
Body Language
Section titled Body Language- Your body language will contribute to the sucess of the interview
- your participants will reflect your body language, try to remain relaxed and open
Moderating
Section titled Moderating- Don’t control the conversation
- Ask open ended questions
- Take note of personal stories
- Improvise when discussions take an interesting path (up to 50 max)
Discussion Guide
Section titled Discussion Guide- Total of around 10-12 questions
- Make note of services and products used - competitors
- Listen to but put aside and don’t dwell on offered solutions
- Focus on:
- Observations
- Quotes
- Inferences
- Evaluate what people like about a product/service - ask them to guide you through the experience
Class Exercise
Section titled Class ExerciseTo introduce this process practically, the class was given a theme of financial budgeting and contactless payments to research. We split into pairs to:
- Define our research goals
- Find out what we need to understand and empathise with our users
- Outline 5 questions to ask so we can fully understand the problem
With these written we rotated amongst the group to conduct user interviews.
Homework
Section titled Homework- Write an interview discussion guide
- Complete 4 user interviews
- Submit discussion guide and written interview notes
Related Links
Section titled Related Links- First Rule of Usability? Don't Listen to Users - Jakob Nielsen
- Interviewing Users - Jakob Nielsen
- What makes a good question? - Chris How
- 5 Steps to Create Good User Interview Questions By @Metacole A Comprehensive Guide - Teo Yu Sheng
Session 04 - Competitive Research
Section titled Session 04 - Competitive ResearchObjectives
Section titled Objectives- Compare products in the same industry
- Understand direct and indirect competition
- Group exercise to relate to final project
Class Slides
Section titled Class SlidesBusiness Needs
Section titled Business Needs- Balanced with the needs of the user
- What are the business goals?
- Stakeholder management
Acheiving Balance
Section titled Acheiving Balance- Tech - Risk
- Business - Cost
- User - Experience
Never A Black Canvas
Section titled Never A Black Canvas- Internal politics
- Resources
- Tech contraints
- Product managers
Assumptions
Section titled Assumptions- Ask why
- Dig deeper
- Repeat back to validate your understanding
- Would would success for the business look like?
- OKRs, KPIs come later, strive for a statement of change in future state
- Find out what the business is trying to achieve and why is it doing it
- Understanding is the goal
Stakeholder Research
Section titled Stakeholder Research- Test with a competitors site if you have nothing built
- Test how it works not how it looks
- Conduct usability testing
Task Analysis
Section titled Task Analysis- Test competitor sites with your users
- You are not testing the critical user journey
- Have lots of tasks tested by your users
Case Study - Uber
Section titled Case Study - Uber- Uber serves…
- People
- Packages
- Food
- JTBD - what is the job?
- The competition might not always be obvious
Parity Is Not A Strategy
Section titled Parity Is Not A Strategy- Feature competition is a waste of time unless validated
- Not knowing why a competitors product is designed the way it is and replicating regardless is a high-risk manoeuvre
- Our goals at this stage is to understand why, not simply pick a solution that seems to fit
Approaches
Section titled Approaches- Feature inventory
- Identify gaps and opportunities, talk to users and validate
- Can be presented as subjective data
- Comparison matrix
- Pluses and deltas
- Strengths and weaknesses
- Good and bad points
- Can be subjective
Analysis
Section titled Analysis- Important to communicate between teams
- Feature creep is not an option
- Is there an unmet need?
- Having no competition might be a problem
- Same feature set but a better experience - validate this by user research
- Scaling a product e.g. iPhone » iPad
- Validate any assumptions
- Let the interviews unpack the opportunities
Opportunities
Section titled Opportunities- Having a niche is important
- Ask what job the user is hiring the product for, how can you do the same job?
- Think about the value chain of the business
- Be broad to find out how jobs are being done
Goal
Section titled Goal- Where are the gaps? How can they be filled?
- How can the experience be improved?
- Look for the unmet needs
Class Exercise
Section titled Class ExerciseIn pairs the class applied competitor research to web-based event ticket services Twickets and Viagogo.
Homework
Section titled HomeworkConduct competitor research in the areas of service related to our final project.
- Feature inventory
- Pluses and deltas
Related Links
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