Creating an effective discussion guide for your User Research

A good discussion guide is arguably the most important part of your testing plan. It is the map that will lead you the learnings you need, and will help ensure that your research sessions are productive. Discussion guides…

How you can take better notes during user research

Being the sole interviewer in a user research session can be strenuous, on both the mind and fingers. But the benefits of taking great notes will save you and your team a tremendous amount of time and headaches turning your notes into…

Set learning objectives to get the most from your User Research

Any gap in your team’s knowledge about the product you’re building should be a catalyst for user research — whether that is questions about the problems your users have, or assumptions you’ve made about the right way to…

Which type of research should I be running?

When you are first getting started running user research for your product or project, there are a number of types of research that you could run. The way to determine what type of research you should be doing is to define your learning objectives.

5 things to look for during Interviews and Screen-based Research

When you are planning a research project, you don’t really know what insights and learnings will come from it. As you speak to participants, patterns and issues will emerge in their feedback, and you will start to…

Writing great tasks for User Research

Usability testing allows you to identify any usability issues, see what users actually do with your product (rather than what they say they do) and determine the participant’s satisfaction with the product experience. The credibility of your results is determined…

How to get your team involved in User Research

User research has the greatest impact when it isn’t facilitated by the researchers or user experience teams alone. Involving the designers and developers in various research activities allows you to open up the problem space. It allows team members…

Learn more about your users with Ethnographic Research

Ethnographic research allows you to understand human behaviour in the context of the person’s natural environment. Conducting your research this way allows you to gain insights about your user’s behaviours, unarticulated motivations…

Using your prototypes with Field Guide

One of the biggest pains in running user research is getting a view of what is happening on your participant’s screen. There have been a number of hacked together solutions to address this — laptop hugging, webcam rigs that sit above the participant’s device, or…

Learn more about your products with screen-based research

At some point in your product’s lifecycle it will move beyond a concept to become a tangible thing. Whether that is an MVP, paper sketches, clickable design prototypes or a designed and coded product, you are going to want to…