Research in the times of social distancing

Methods to help you conduct research and gain insights during the pandemic

It’s been tough. It’s been more than 6 months since the start of the pandemic and it’s nowhere close to ending. The key question everyone has been asking is how do we conduct research in times of social distancing? How do we capture our user’s behaviour in context? What do we do when we can’t get into a user’s house?

I spent the first few months of this pandemic researching how to conduct remote studies as I had never done that. At Flipkart, we tried and tested a lot of ways in which we could generate data as before. We started with an experimentative approach to setting up processes for remote research. Here are some of the methods that we have used at Flipkart –

Remote Diary studies

You can ask users to fill out a diary based on assigned tasks. This does not require face-to-face interaction as the user can do it from their smartphone itself. Important: An initial briefing over call would be definitely required.

Various tools can be used to set up a remote diary study. Google Forms work well when the data the user needs to update regularly through the diary period. On the other hand, you can also record what a person does by using the Lookback app (with their permission, of course!). Alternatively, you can also ask the user to create a video of themselves doing the task and send it to you via email or WhatsApp.

Screen share on video calling apps

You can simply schedule a call with the participant via Zoom or Google Meet and ask the user to share their screen. You can observe the participant as she is performing the task on the call. You can also stream the call so that your stakeholders can watch the session, as it happens, without disturbing the session. These calls can be recorded as well for future reference.

Recall Test via screen share

If you want to measure the first impressions of a design, try a “recall test” over call. Simply share your screen for 5 seconds and then ask the user to describe what they saw. You can also ask the users to draw what they saw and show it to you on the call.

Rather than a static image, you can also create a low-fidelity prototype and share it with the user. The user can run the prototype on their phone or laptop and share their understanding it on the call.

Survey

You can send a survey about your app/system while the users are using it. Ask users to rate the current page they are using in terms of relevance, comprehension, or whatever parameters you want to measure here. This will work as an intercept in the user’s journey and give you feedback instantly than in retrospective.

Quick feedback call

You can interview users on the phone to get a quick view of the issue you are solving. It will give you a sense if the problem is genuine or not. Ask if they have faced such a problem, where and when, and how did they overcome it. Also, ask them to rate its severity from 1–10.

Desirability testing on slides

Create a presentation where you have your design as the first slide. The next slide can have a range of positive, negative, and neutral adjectives such as clean, boring, etc. Ask users to select 5 from these adjectives to describe the design, and then the reason behind these selections.

This can also be done on a prototype wherein the first page can have the design and the next page, the adjectives. Here, the users can do a screen share during the call.

Rank order on Google Slides

Place various widgets of a page in sequence on the Google Slides or Google Jamboard. Ask users to rank the widgets based on where they expect them. Further, ask them to add or remove any widgets. This will help you understand the relevance for each one of them.

Card Sort on slides

Similar to desirability testing and ranking, just create the various cards on slides. The moderator can screen share the page and move cards around based on what the users want. This way you can easily document the groups. Further, the users can then name or describe the groups and make changes as the discussion continues.

Our users have extra responsibilities now both at work and at home. We need to be mindful and conduct research with care.

These are unprecedented times. We need to be more sensitive about our users than ever. They may be tired if working from home or may have lost a job. Our users have extra responsibilities now both at work and at home. We need to be mindful and conduct research with care.
The pandemic does give us unique challenges to conduct research. However, we have never had better technology to help us combat these challenges. These past few months, we have looked at every type of research and found good workarounds to get in-depth insights with some tweaks. We have been testing these out, iterating and improving on these methods as we go.

So neither give, nor accept excuses that keep you away from taking feedback from your users.

Don’t forget to clap for it 👏

Hope you found this article useful. Feel free to drop any feedback in the comments. And if you want to chat about research, design and product, feel free to drop me a DM on any of the platforms.

Thanks for reading! ❤️

This is one of the many interesting things that we do at Flipkart. To check out more work from our Design & User Research teams, follow us on:
Dribbble | Medium