Learn more about your products with screen-based research
At some point in your product’s lifecycle it will move beyond a concept to become a tangible thing. Whether that is an MVP, paper sketches, clickable design prototypes or a designed and coded product, you are going to want to continue to learn from your customers during that time.
Throughout the design and iteration on your product, you will continually make assumptions about how to best solve your users problems. The questions and assumptions that come up during this time should form the basis for your research. This will help you learn where you are accurately solving problems with your product design, and where you have gone off course. If you have a broken user expeirence, poorly communicated information, usability issues, bugs or other problems with your product, this is the best way to surface them before you push new products or features to the world.
In order to get the most out of your screen-based research, here are some best practices to keep in mind:
- Provide stimulus for the user — sketches, prototypes, or live URL
- Provide the user with tasks to understand how your product would be used in a real world context
- Pay attention to the participant’s verbal and non-verbal reactions, in addition to what the participant does on-screen
- Involve the design, development and product owner teams as much as possible so they can learn from the participant’s first hand
- Share short and concise learnings and next steps from your research, because the goal isn’t just to learn, but to act on those learnings
Get your team started running user research — sign up for Field Guide