Note-taking 101 for UX research interview session
Have you ever collaborate or maybe request a research project to UX Researchers for any of your project? If so, I assume you get the picture of what UX Researchers usually do.
As we know, one of the most common things that UX Researchers do is conducting in-depth interviews, which is the most common research method to gain insights and learn about users’ stories.
Have you ever wondered what comes after the interviews are done?
Yup, you’ve guessed it right… It’s analysis time.
But before jumping into the analysis phase, there’s an essential step that UX Researchers need to take in order to ensure the insights they generated is credible and insightful to be delivered through result presentations.
And, the essential step is they need to prepare the note-taking.
What is Note-taking in UX research?
In UX research, note-taking is an activity where we transcribe what we’ve seen and heard during a research session (usually in-depth interviews, FGD, and ethnography) into transcript.
Why the note-taking phase is very crucial?
Note-taking is essential for qualitative research because the transcript serves as data for UX Researchers to analyze and synthesize into useful information for the requesting stakeholder. The quality of shared information strongly depends on the quality of the transcript note itself.
Therefore, it can be really stressful for the UX Researchers if the transcript from the note-taking is incomplete.
UX Researchers might need to go through the recordings again in order to complete the missing part and sometimes UX Researchers even have to redo the note-taking from scratch by listening all of the recordings.
Can you imagine how ineffective it would be?
What if there were 10 participants and the duration of the session is 1 hour each?
10 participants x 1 hour = 10 hours!
There will be 10 different recordings and UX Researchers need to go through all of it, they need to spend around 10 hours just to complete all of the note-taking.
Stressful I know, but as the ones who collaborate or requested the research project, there’s something we can do to help them to ease the “pain” or even hastens their delivery process. Can you guess what is it?
Yup, you’ve guessed it right again…
We can help them do the note-takings. But, not just any note-taking, it has to be done right so the result will be rich of the actual and precise data, and then later it can be useful for the researchers to proceed to the analyzing phase.
So, how to do the note-taking properly?
Now I’m gonna share some advice and tips on how to create effective note-taking transcripts.
Disclaimer!
These tips are listed based on my experience and what I’ve learned, so be wise in perceiving the context.
1. Write down everything according to the actual event
When taking the note, it’s strongly recommended to generate the output in verbatim format, so write down all of the things that the participant say. By doing so, we’ll get more information about the participant itself. See the difference from the example below.
Pro tip
Put it in your mindset that “All of the things that the participant said are important”, therefore you’ll be more intrigued to write down all of the conversation.
Avoid 🚫
“Participant usually accessed the home page and the flash sale section.”
Try ✅
“Well, I usually observe the home page, and I also love to see what’s in the flash sale because shopping is my hobby and when I found my desired products are on sale, it really made my day.”
2. Watch for the reaction, interaction, and other behavior from the participant and the environment
When conducting interview, FGD, and especially ethnography methods, there are almost always things that are not represented well by the participant’s words. Therefore, it would be better for us to observe the participant’s behavior when we’re listening to their story. It could be many things like how they react, their expression, even how the surrounding environment would affect the participant’s response.
When you observed something “interesting”, transforms it into words in your transcript.
The observation would enrich our data so the researchers could “relive” the moments to interpret the actual situation more clearly. Therefore, it may provide better research results later on. It’s especially useful when we can only record the audio at that moment.
Avoid 🚫
“Yes, this feature is gonna be very useful for me.”
Try ✅
“Yes, this feature is gonna be very useful for me.” The participant said that while being busy serving his customer that is visiting his store.
3. Avoid using our own interpretation or personal bias
We need to remind ourselves that we are not the user, so we need to stop thinking like one. False interpretation could be fatal to your research result, so be very mindful when we do the note-taking.
Pro tip
Use the first person perspective when doing the note-taking in order to avoid our own personal bias.
Avoid 🚫
“The save image feature works well because the participant understand how it works.”
Try ✅
“Hmm, is this a feature to save my photo? Do I need to tap this button to save my image?”
4. Write down the questions asked by the interviewer
This is one of the most useful and important tips because it allows the researcher to get into the context more quickly. Indeed that most researchers may have provided interview guideline in excel file (mostly) alongside with its questions, but there’s also chances you might get overwhelmed with the questions and confused about where to put the notes. Therefore, if you have provided notes imbued with the questions, it really helps the researcher to pin point the notes to the suitable questions in their guideline.
Example:
(Question) “You just said that you liked the confirmation button in the checkout page, can you please tell me more about it, like, why do you like the button?”
(Answer) “Of course, I like the button because it ensures me before I do the payment. And I think it’s crucial because it would be ugly if I made any wrong action related to my money.”
5. Add a timestamp
It’s very common for us to miss some parts of the transcript especially when doing live note-taking. Even so, we can minimize the impact by giving timestamp with the format of [hh:mm:ss] in the parts that we’ve missed, therefore it helps us to trace back to the part of the recording that we need to complete. Another thing is that the timestamp can be also used as tag of “interesting” part in the session, just in case we need to show it to the requesting stakeholder when we’re doing presentation.
Example:
[00:55:10]
“Hmm, well I love the design as it offers fresh new design,” but the participant said that while wiggling his legs and his face is frowning.
“Oh, I used the feature because — ” [missed — 01:13:45]
So, those are some tips from me for note-taking during a research session. Although the ideal outcome of the note-taking might differs for each researcher, but hopefully, what I’ve included above are enough to represent more or less of what UX Researcher needs in their note-taking transcripts.
I know it can be overwhelming at first, but trust me, it’s gonna worth the effort.
I do really hope that this article could inspire those who collaborate with UX Researchers to deliver a better quality note-taking transcripts. I would also recommend more people to participate in the note-taking, it would help you gain better understanding towards the participant, a.k.a your user. So you can hone your empathy and create a better product.
See you on my next post!
If you’re interested in applying for a full-time position or intern, Blibli is currently hiring! Send your resume to recruitment@blibli.com and get the chance to work with our PM and UX team and create our own unique stories.
