How to Conduct User Research with a Prototype
Hint: The goal isn’t to test the prototype
Take a moment to imagine parents of young kids who have loved ones residing in different countries during the pandemic. Their ways to get connected might be quite different compared to the time before the pandemic and they might lose a connection with their extended family members.
With this in mind, our client, Nine Tales (9T), started with the question- how might we help them get connected with each other, especially for kids to interact with aunts, uncles, and grandparents?
As a side note, if you like to learn about 9T’s Logo design process, here is a link to the story!
Starting from the initial question, the team needed to understand parents’ context — What were the actual circumstances of parents and kids during the pandemic? How do they interact with distant family members and friends? And what are their needs to get connected better?
To answer those questions, we planned user interview sessions with parents and kids, to hear their storytelling experiences and what their needs are. This is all part of validating the design concept and gaining confidence to make sure the idea tackles the needs of our users, parents, and their children.
Whenever we think about good user research, a quote I like to refer to is the following, coined by an industrial designer, Dieter Rams.
“You cannot understand good design if you do not understand people; design is made for people.” — Dieter Rams
Preparation and Methods
To properly understand parents’ thoughts and needs and to reduce gaps in the design concept, the 55 Minutes team planned the user interview sessions below:
Our team worked together with the Nine Tales team to design initial user flows and how the app would look visually, which represents the initial hypothesis of the app function — recording stories with family members for kids.
Why bring up the prototype in the early stage?
- To use it as a prop: Imagine you describe your idea verbally, such as “we’d like to develop a storytelling digital product where parents can record the story and their children can listen to it.” There’re many possible interpretations of how the idea would look like. However, if we show the visual of the idea, it reduces the gap in understanding how it works.
- To prioritize empathizing with target users: Remember what Dieter Rams mentioned, the most important thing at this stage is to understand target users’ needs, not to be excited by showing your visual designs — but use them as a prop and a tool to communicate!
Accordingly, we designed the interview conversation structure in a way to help us gain an understanding of their context first and then listen to parents’ honest feedback on the design concept.
The interview flow:
Section A — Understand users’ context
We recruited six parents whose children’s ages ranged from 3 to 11 years old, and who were residing in the US, Malaysia, and Singapore. At the beginning of the interview stage, we focused on understanding their background and their context with behavioral characteristics.
Some interview question samples are included below:
- How do you usually spend time with your child in your free time?
- What do you do to stay connected with your children?
- Do you have family members living overseas, but stay connected? Who are they?
- How do your children interact with other family members, especially those living overseas? How about during the pandemic?
- How often do your children interact with them?
The above questions are light-hearted and easier questions to initiate and warm up the discussion to understand users’ context and behaviors around the topic areas.
Section B — Present low-fi prototype
The main intention is not to evaluate the prototype, rather, it is to hear their thoughts and sense out if the overall design would tackle their needs and pain points surrounding the act of storytelling with their kids and connect kids between family members. Considering this intention and purpose, we didn’t need to limit ourselves to only talking about the prototype.
For example, when we present the story genres list, we can ask:
- How easy or difficult is it to grasp the meaning of a genre name in the prototype? Are there any genres you feel unfamiliar with?
But we ask questions to understand their context such as:
- How have the genres that your child likes to read or listen to changed over time?
- What do you hope your child learns from reading or listening to stories at your child’s age?
Section C — Understand users’ needs and wants
We asked some follow-up questions based on what they answered in the previous 40 minutes to go deeper and understand the reason why they like or dislike the concept, and if they see themselves using the concept.
The interview question samples are as below:
- How likely do you see yourself using this app to read/record stories to your child? And why? Any concerns?
- How likely do you see your child using this and reading a story? And why? Any concerns?
- What are other features you like to see or take away from the list? Why or why not?
If parents would like to suggest a totally different concept that would tackle their needs, that’s totally fine too as we use the low-fi prototype as a hinge to generate other innovative ideas and discuss other possibilities.
User Research Key Findings
The main research findings from our user research with our six parents are summarized in the graphic below.
Main takeaway:
It all comes down to better understanding users’ context and their needs whether you’re in the early or later stage of your design. Check if your interview questions, in the beginning, are designed in a way to neutralize your views and perspectives, and make sure to listen to where your users are coming from and how they behave in the topic area.
In our case, we asked some contextual questions at the start to understand how they currently get connected with other extended family members. At the same time, we designed a session in a way that we hear some usability aspects about the prototype, but we learned how parents and children behave in storytelling, and what are parents’ expectations. Thus, the design in our hands is used as a tool to facilitate your understanding of parents’ wants and needs.
Quick preview!
Were you curious about what design solution came up with after this research activity? Stay tuned to hear more about our story on the design solution with Nine Tales! Also do not hesitate to comment or contact us if you have any questions!
If you’re interested in learning more about our work, you can reach out at hello@55mins.com.
Hye Yoon is a UX researcher at 55 Minutes. She has a Bachelor’s in furniture and spatial design from Seoul, South Korea, and has a Master’s in Helsinki, Finland. Currently, she lives in Singapore, observing her surroundings from the lens of a tourist from time to time. She loves nature and goes cycling every weekend in the Northeast region of Singapore.
