User Research Practices for INDIA — HelloMeets x ShareChat
This Saturday, HelloMeets organised an event at ShareChat Office which was centered around — User Research Practices for INDIA.
And this subject in particular very much interests me because this is an activity where you get to know the people you will be or are building for, their context in which they are going to use the features you will design and what not?
And that being said, the agendas were pretty interesting and got me to book the tickets for the event.
Just a heads up, ShareChat people, you got a damn cool office, Kudos. I absolutely loved it.
Now, coming to the event part of it, I was amazed to see a room full of people coming on a Saturday morning and that clearly shows why Bangalore has most lit scene when it comes to design communities and events.
The session was conducted by Design Head at ShareChat, Mr. Sohil Bansal.
So, I am jotting down the key highlights of the event and takeaways, so that the people who couldn’t join the event for some reasons can be benefitted from this.
Event highlights were:
- How to plan for the field trips?
- Basics of User Research.
- Ethnography. Problems with Personas.
- Case Studies.
- Selling: Sell your ideas, don’t let them die in notes.
- Tools, Resources and QnA.
Key Takeaways:
Types of User Research:
- Foundational User Research — This is what you should do when you don’t know what to build and seeking answers to questions like, what new features we can launch. It is often the most difficult and if you are early in the game of user research, don’t start with this one.
- Usability Testing: It is often the most neglected part of user research wherein you test it out for the usability around the features that you are prototyping or designing. It should be done when you are seeking answers for questions like, is this feature actually usable or desirable, how easy it is for the user to get the hang of it.
- A/B Testing or Quantitative Analysis: It is done when you are not sure which prototype is going to work for the users. So, you experiment it out and let the numbers do the talking.
The 4th one in this list is rather an unconventional one which, the speaker named as “Self DogFooding” which means eating your own dog food. Simply put, use your own product.
Field Trips:
How do you plan, travelling and cautions?
Field trips are expensive and requires efforts from a hell lot of directions. So, before planning a field trip, ask this question,
“Whatever you problem is, can it be dealt remotely?” If you nod in affirmation, don’t do it. Period.
For places where you are not familiar with the language, their cultures, it is highly advised to take the help of someone who knows the place well and understands their language.
To pick out cities to travel, look at the analytics data.
Also, a word of caution,
“Don’t plan your first field trip to a place which you aren’t familiar with.”
“Go to the field trip with a goal in mind and best, if you got a stake in the problem that you are looking out answers for. That will make you more involved in that. ”
“Make sure to calculate the ROI of field research.”
Ethnography
Personas can be the same but what differentiates the usage behaviour predominantly is the, “Culture” and hence, ethnography is given precedence over persona at ShareChat.
Case Study 1:
What did travelling through 10 districts taught us about cultural differences in Kerala?
Be friends with your users.
Make them feel smart.
Talk at length to them. Maybe take them out for lunch.
Users might help you find the USP of the platform you are building for because of the unexpected ways they might be using it for.
Case Study 2:
How did 3000 Km road trip through Punjab, Haryana, & Rajasthan cleared our myths about expectations of the audience?
Extreme users of your platform not only gives you better insights of the product but also understanding their context can give a hell lot of growth strategies and insights.
Case Study 3:
An analogy for testing: Difference b/w a real and a lab rat.
You can’t say that you have done testing of your product sitting in an AC room on your high end devices wherein the person you are building for, uses it in scorching heat with a sub par smartphone and 3G connection.
And hence, this analogy stands true.
Selling: Sell your ideas.
Stand by the user research insights and sell your ideas to the stakeholders and product managers.
Don’t just let them die in notes but make sure that you have appropriate reasoning to back it up.
And since we gather a lot of qualitative data in the user research, make sure that you build a hypothesis around it that should be measurable.
Tools, Resources mentioned in the event:
UserTesting.com: Helps you in outsourcing your usability testing.
LookBack: Tool to help you record the screen, face and audio of the user at the same time.
** Miscellaneous Footnotes:
Content is a product.
A negative sentiment is much more powerful than a positive sentiment.
Research papers are good for foundational research.
UX Copy should have a character to it.
That was a wonderful event well organised by HelloMeets and volunteers. A huge thanks to HelloMeets, Sohil and ShareChat team for the well executed and insightful event.
Leave a comment if you learned something new today and I also blog at: UXSprout where I share my learnings.
Some pictures from the event.
Happy Learning. :)
