User research — finding the missing voices
Listening to the playbacks in our recent peer learning session, one interesting theme emerged — many of us felt that there were important user groups that we weren’t managing to reach with our research.
As charities (and within the time frame of the Deloitte programme), we are used to working with what’s to hand, and, in the case of user research, that often means speaking to people who are already service users. So, by definition, we are speaking to the people that those services work well for — but are there other people out there that we aren’t reaching? And how do we find out what they need?
In my case at Family Lives, I began by engaging with existing website users by using Hotjar to put a pop-up on the website to collect email addresses from anyone interested in taking part in research interviews.
Although I still have more interviews to conduct, one thing that I have noticed that the participants so far have in common is that they seemed very switched on, had done a lot of their own research and were very aware of the support and resources that are out there. Some were even professionals finding resources for people they support themselves as well as for their own families — perhaps this is reflective of the kind of person likely to put themselves forward for research?
Our participants gave me really positive feedback about our existing services and website (which is always good to hear!) and some useful insights on the problem statement I’m working on. But I couldn’t help but feel that I am missing some key user groups that Family Lives has a key priority to support — such as those in poverty, with disabilities, or with English as an additional language. Our local services already support many people from these groups, but there is more we can do to make sure our digital services are accessible and inclusive.
That’s why my next step is going to be to work with my colleagues in local services to find ways to speak with service users on the front line and to try to hear the voices of user groups that I so far haven’t heard.
