Jamming about the best UX Research techniques — UXinsight 2019
Right now, Utrecht (NL) is the scene of one of the few conferences that are dedicated solely to user experience research. Boasting an impressive line-up of experienced speakers and hosts, UXinsight is 2-day event, featuring a day of workshops and a day chock-full of inspiring talks and keynotes. On the first day I attended two workshops, and I’m here to share what I’ve learned.
Workshop 1: Innovative methods to evaluate the dynamics of UX
The first workshop of the day was hosted by Carine Lallemand, an assistant professor at the Eindhoven Technical University. She has an all-too recognizable issue in her cross hairs: the challenge of measuring months of use in a single research session. This is a pressing issue as UX has become more and more about designing long-lasting services whose use can be spread out over months, and you typically only measure a moment in the entire User Journey with any given research method.
My expectations going into this workshop were a bit of a mixed bag. The problem Carine sketches is real, and I was interested in hearing her solution. However, her background is academic, and translating academic solutions to the industry is a challenge in its own right.
It is safe to say that I was positively surprised by Carine. She addressed the gap between the academic and business worlds right away, and stated one of her goals was to bridge that gap. The methods she presented and that we got to work with are compact and usable.
Carine argued that UX (design) is becoming more and more about designing services for long-term use. This means that the stakes are very high: we’re working on products that have a big impact on the daily lives of a lot of people. On the flip-side it is very hard to measure UX over a prolonged period of time, as whenever we do a measurement, we often only measure a single moment. (e.g. during an observation we test a single flow).
Instead, Carine proposes that we measured the percepted User Experience by asking users after-the-fact what their experiences were with a product or service. This effectively measures UX as people remember it, rather than how they experienced it at that time. In many cases this could actually be more important as how we remember things is generally what shapes our opinions on something.
She introduced various methods that can be used for this, but the one that stuck with me the most was retrospective journey mapping. In a nutshell, this is basically the bastard child of a semi-structured interview and customer journey mapping. Instead of making a journey map based on data points, we ask our users to sketch their own map, starting with the moment when they started using the product months ago. Every curve and kink in the journey gets annotated, and the entire conversation should be recorded.
Arguably, measuring remembered UX is more important than actual UX, as our memories are the basis upon which we form our opinions.
I was surprised by in how much detail I could remember the on-boarding process of an app I started using half a year ago. Once I started noting down my experiences at the time memories flowed freely, especially with an interviewer asking me the right questions at the right time.
Naturally, this style of research is best used in cases where you’re more curious about long-term experiences. To use the example of e-commerce, this is a method that you use when you’re interested in loyalty, not conversion.
At the end of the workshop Carine threw a curve-ball by introducing a completely unrelated method: using sentence stems in surveys as a substitute for open questions. This unexpected snippet is perhaps my key takeaway for the whole day.
The idea is that people are much more inclined to finish a statement than to answer an open-ended question. This is backed up by data: a typical optional open question in a survey gets a response rate of 20%. In one of her studies, optional sentence stems got a response rate of 95%, and increased survey completion and number of respondents.
This is a low-effort method that could drastically increase the usefulness of surveys if applied correctly.
Workshop 2: Using design fiction to explore possible future experiences
The afternoon workshop was hosted by Sandra Griffel & Sussane Junglas from Denkwerk, a big name in the German UX world. They have explored the possibilities of investigating the human side of upcoming technological advancements, such as AI and automation. At the moment when these topics are covered the focus usually lies on the possibilities of the technology, and the human side is left unexplored.
I specifically attended this workshop as exploring the future of interaction is something that is currently outside of my comfort zone, since I mainly work with existing systems and user problems. Predicting the future is hard — even for the most experienced people.
Users suck at predicting their future.
Standing in front of a cozy, almost crowded living room setting, Sandra & Sussane explained just that: users suck at predicting the(ir) future, often sticking to clichés and personal goals and dreams, leading to a picture-perfect scenario.
So instead, they came up with a workshop format in which users are guided into creating utopian and dystopian worlds. It includes envisioning what the lives of people in it would look like, and creating solutions for their possible problems and opportunities. The results are insightful discussions and eye openers on the topic.
The approach is relatively simple and contains three main steps: worldbuilding, ideation, and reflection. During worldbuilding, participants are asked to imagine themselves living in this potential world, and truly flesh it out together. What stories happen in this world? How did we get here? What threats and opportunities are there for us?
Next up is ideation: in this fictional setting, what kind of new products can we imagine? Our fictional setting was a dystopian future where reliable news has ceased to exist and people instead follow cult-of-personality fortune tellers. Wouldn’t you want some insurance when you make your choices based on a single person’s predictions?
And lastly, it is time for reflection. What have we truly learned from these provocative ideas? What can we do now to prevent or act on any of these possible futures?
Looking back, I’m left with mixed feelings. On the one hand, if I need to take my clients or users to the next level and really cast a glance into potential futures, this is a good method to use. On the other hand, the time investment (2–3 full days of workshop) and lack of actionable outcomes make it an incredibly tough sell for any project.
UXinsight has wrapped up! I wrote about the second day here. For those of you that attended. see you next time!
