Getting To Know Research Participants
In the past 10 years, online technology has been growing super fast. The slogan “life in hand” is manifesting in our daily life, where we can do almost every activity just by clicking on the tiny keypad of what we often called the “smart little box.”
This acceleration in the technological development requires people, as the user, to adapt fast and maintain the pace to gain the maximum benefit.
After all, that is why we create technology: to simplify life, isn’t it?
For me, it is a blessing in disguise to work as a UX Researcher because I have the privilege to see and hear the people reaction in their experience, while interacting with this sophisticated technology in the form of products or services.
So kindly allow me to share one of the top challenge in my one year experience as a UX Researcher in one of the biggest e-commerce industry in Indonesia, Blibli.com: how to get the “essence of information” from the research participants.
I realize that my experience is still young in the field, so I open my door and welcome any opinion, feel free to write a comment. :)
For those who work in the field of research surely agree that inviting customers to participate in a research interview is a challenge.
When we already successfully invite the participants, we hope the interview can run smoothly and get as many as insights. In that occasion, we deal with many customer types and sometime get ‘irrelevant’ participants. And in that particular time, we need to make these participants share honestly, what they think and feel about using our product or service.
Another challenge is how to dig from these various type of participants.
One of my mentor says:
It needs a right question to get the right answer.
Ok, so how to ask ‘the right question to get the right answer’ to them?
What I am going to share is my experience dealing with many research participants and how I tried to ask the ‘right’ questions.
Based on my experience, the conversation is going well when I know what kind of person I am dealing with, so I tried to adapt this when dealing with research participant. I tried to categorizing the participants based on their behavior in communicating. This categorization helps a lot to get the ‘essence of information’ from them.
The Talkative Tuti
This participant is cheerful, warm, and high-spirited. You can see and feel it when you shake their hand at the first time and look at the sparks in their eyes.
The good thing about them is they love to talk. Only by asking one question, she will share all her experience, and they are honest! They truly share their personal experience, both the good and the bad one.
The challenge with them is during the answer, sometimes it leads to an unrelated topic, so as a researcher we have to be able to always bring it back to the research guideline. Although the conversation is interesting, just remember not to get carried away to discuss about the unrelated topic.
The Careful Condro
You can see and feel by the way he dress (usually neat, the shirt is tucked in into his trouser) and the way he talk (low tone and slow pace).
When we ask something, he will carefully answer and you will often hear this
“ Ini menurut saya ya…” — “This is my opinion…”
“ Ini kalau saya, ga tau kalau yang lain…” — “I don’t know about other people experience, but my experience is… “
“Mungkin kalau customer lain beda, tapi saya…” — “Maybe my answer will different from others.. “
They feel that the interview is to review or judge them so to make the answer flowing, the researcher should always remind that the interview is about to hear their real experience and therefore we appreciate all the good and bad interaction with the product or service. We also can say that their bad experience or their opinion is important for the improvement and also to ensure their next interaction is smooth and better so the goal to provide a product or service that useful, helpful and simplify life is achieved.
The Messenger Maman
This type of participant is the opposite of the Careful Condro. If Condro often underline that this is his truly experience, Maman on the other side often answer from other people’s perspective.
We will often hear
“Kalo orang-orang biasanya sih…” — “This is what the other usually do..”
“Pengalaman temen saya gini…” — “Based on my friend’s experience…”
“Kakak saya pernah tuh kejadian…” — “My brother has ever experience this…”
Maman is like a messenger that delivers other people stories. But we have to remember that he is the one that we want to interview. We want to hear his experience instead of other people’s experience so we always have to remember to ask about his experience after Maman finished “deliver message” about other’s experience: “What about you?” “Do you ever experience this?” “Share us your stories!” And in the next question, we must emphasize that we need to hear his experience first.
The Expert Elbert
If you ever interviewed a participant who knows not only your product or service but also the company and even the similar product or service from other company, means you already met The Expert Elbert. First he will share his experience with your product or service, after that he will compare your product or service with the competitors. He is meticulous! He knows the strength and weakness that owned by the product or service from each company. Sometimes, this kind of participant could also identify similar thing from a different kind of product or service.
If your research is looking for inspiration, having Expert Elbert as a participant is good since he can share from a different perspective, but if your research is for improving (by doing usability testing), his answer could be biased. To avoid that, always remind him to focus on what he feels when interacting with the tested product/service.
The Quiet Kiki
This is the most challenging type of participants, the one with short answer
“Udah bagus.” — “This is already good.”
“Ok kok.” — “Fine.”
“Ya, gitu deh.” — “Uhmm, that’s it!”
No matter how hard we try to find the perfect research participant, sometimes we have Kiki sit in our chair and we cannot avoid that.
Some says that the quiet person will be comfortable telling stories when they trust the person so we have to gain her trust in the short time. Don’t be too pushy because it will make her more shut down.
Usually, I tell my experience first. This technique is often successful to make her comfortable enough to start telling hers.
Summary
User Experience goals is to understand what people feels when interacting with our product or service. Research is one of the activity to understand and to make the research runs well:
- We need to ask the right question to get the right answer.
- We need to getting know our research participants before we ask the right question.
This is a skill that we need to practice over and over again. So my fellow (UX) Researchers, let’s always sharpen our skill! :)
If you just communicate, you can get by. But if you communicate skillfully, you can work miracles.
~ Jim Rohn, Business Philosopher
If you’re interested in applying for a full-time position or intern as an UX Designer or UX Researcher, Blibli.com is currently hiring! Send your resume to recruitment@blibli.com and get the chance to work with other UX Designers & Researchers with their own unique stories.
