A User Researcher in a Lockdown World — How I am still able to do ‘Business as Usual’

Tools and techniques that allow me to continue to conduct user research and collaborate with my team remotely.

I am a User Researcher at Kainos, an award-winning digital services company. My job is to spend time with people who use products and services and understand their needs and pain-points. I then translate this into something tangible to help build a digital experience which makes those peoples’ lives better and easier. That means the majority of my time is spent with other people (and often with a freshly laid canvas of post-it notes surrounding me).

This was the observation room from one of my last usability tests (whilst I was with the participant moderating the session).

The coronavirus has changed everything about my job. I have gone from meeting with people every day to none at all. I used to have huge whiteboards next to me to draw on, map things out, stick up wireframes and discuss these with colleagues.

Yet, despite that, I am still able to do my job.

I’ll be the first to admit that cabin fever was quick to settle being confined to the four walls of my house. Though, I feel very fortunate to work for a company that has made it possible for me to continue working and proud that I can still add value. There’s undoubtedly a lot of uncertainty, sad news and anxiousness at the moment and the stability in having work to do provides routine and structure to my day — for that, I am very grateful. I wanted to write about how I have adapted my pre-pandemic role to a post-pandemic world.

My new office — I know I’m lucky to have a desk with a monitor at home. That wasn’t always the case so I have a couple of hacks to help your back and posture if you are sans-desk 1) if you have a separate keyboard & mouse, put your laptop on a pile of books so that you can use it as a screen at eye level to help you sit straighter, 2) I found the kitchen counter the perfect height to use as a stand-up desk — just don’t boil the kettle when you have a meeting!

My current project is to build a new digital service for the UK Government. We have a team of Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Developers, Solution Architects, User Experience (UX) Designers, User Researchers, Delivery Managers — a fairly typical digital delivery team. I wanted to share some tips and techniques we have adopted to work collaboratively, along with ways I am able to continue to conduct user research.

Remote Team Collaboration

1. Daily Team Meeting

This used to happen in person but now we continue to have this every day over Zoom. It’s a morning ritual that allows the team to re-group and align over tasks achieved the day before and tasks to be completed today. To connect with the team and humanise the stand-ups we always have videos on and encourage the virtual background feature in Zoom to have a little fun! We have a digital ‘task’ or sprint board in JIRA so we can keep track of what everyone is working on.

My morning stand-up view, adorned with smiling faces and fun virtual backgrounds. One of our team even found a photo of our office so he looks like he’s still there! (A big thank you to my team for agreeing to be in this photo!)

2. Communication Channels

Microsoft Teams is the main communication channel for my team. We use it to send direct messages, discuss certain topics in group chats and have formal communication channels. It’s a hub of activity and it’s been a huge help in connecting the team. The client team uses Slack so I also use this tool which is very similar, besides email communication. One thing I’ve had to do more diligently is to make a conscious effort to update my ‘status’ to accurately state whether I am available, away or busy.

3. Meeting Etiquette

Since the whole team is now operating remotely, we’ve had to improve meeting etiquette to respect individuals’ time and input. First and foremost, making the agenda and objectives of the meeting extra clear. Second, if it’s a large meeting giving the team enough notice and considering new working schedules due to childcare and work-life balance. Every team member has given their preferred times to work, including lunch breaks and when they want to finish, and this has been put into a combined spreadsheet view. It really helps to manage mental well-being and allow the team to balance working versus home life.

4. Virtual Whiteboards

Mural is a brilliant tool for group collaboration. We’ve recently used it to review designs based on user feedback. It allows the whole team to add their thoughts on virtual post-it notes, draw circles and cross things out. It’s the main way we are able to continue whiteboard activities as a team. We‘ve also used Miro, another collaborative whiteboard tool.

I’ve created this checklist to help you plan a remote workshop or team collaboration session:

• WHY are you running a workshop? Consider the outcome of your whiteboard space first e.g. is the session for alignment or idea generation? Knowing why you need to collaborate and what you intend on outputting will help you focus the workshop and consider what you do during it.
• WHEN should you run the workshop? Consider the agenda and plan in a break at least every hour plus contingency time for technical difficulties. Make sure timings, especially breaks are communicated with the attendees.
• HOW can you run a workshop remotely? How should people partake/engage? What tools you are going to use? We use Zoom and Mural to make this work. Consider the workshop etiquette and how attendees should engage with one another. Utilise tools that help facilitate the session such as breakout rooms in Zoom or the facilitator superpowers in Mural.
• WHO is the workshop aimed at? Know your audience and their digital capability — onboard attendees to the tools. Humanise the session as much as possible e.g. turning video cameras on and using an icebreaker activity to connect people is a good way to achieve this.
• WHAT activities will you do in the workshop? Preparation is key. Spend extra time on preparing your workspace layout and lock it down otherwise attendees could move it around. Mural has many free templates that you can utilise.

Conducting Remote User Research

1. Remote User Research (and Remote Observation Rooms)

I am currently in the evaluative phase of research for my current project. I carried out remote usability testing from home with participants. One tip is to provide more flexibility in terms of dates/times to be accommodating of adjusted working patterns during the current lockdowns in many countries.

I obtained written consent in an email in advance of each session and got the participants to acknowledge their consent on video recordings at the start of each session. I used a password-protected Zoom meeting with each participant, during which I shared my screen and gave them control over my mouse to trial a prototype the team had built. You could also use this feature to allow them to remotely sign a consent form if you still needed to obtain this at the start of the session.

How I managed to conduct usability testing and an observation room remotely (without having the whole team dial into the participant meeting and potentially bias the session). It’s still a bit clunky as it requires the facilitator in the middle to sit in silence whilst the audio from one meeting is relayed to the other, but it did work!

The UX Designer dialled into the Zoom meeting as well but remained on mute and had their camera turned off so as not to put the participant at unease. The UX Designer facilitated the observation room by sharing their screen in a Microsoft Teams meeting so that the rest of our team could observe the session. (Don’t worry, we already checked the participant was okay with team observing the session).

I shared a session pack with observation notes in advance of the usability tests so the team knew the user journey, what we were looking out for and what hypotheses we were testing. This served as a guide for the team.

The team took down observations collaboratively in Microsoft Teams meeting notes functionality (I built a template to facilitate this against each hypothesis). I decided to use this primarily so everything they needed would be in one tool and the team wouldn’t have to switch between the meeting view and another window/tool.

2. Collaborative Space to Analyse Findings

As a team, we used Mural to put the current designs onto a virtual whiteboard and unpick them against the usability findings. We added observations on post-it notes and drew circles around areas for improvement. This got the team working together and aligned quickly over how the design would change for the next iteration.

I’ve had to anonymise this journey as the digital service is not yet live. However, we used Mural to annotate, draw and make notes about the usability findings and discuss improvements.

3. Utilising Resources and Guides

I have also been reading a lot of guides and articles published on best practices that have been published since the pandemic. These have been helpful to get further inspiration and ideas for conducting user research:

https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/user-research/conducting-user-research-while-people-must-stay-at-home-because-of-coronavirus

https://userresearch.blog.gov.uk/2020/04/02/user-research-and-covid-19-crowdsourcing-tools-and-tips-for-remote-research/

Conclusion

In summary, I think the technology and tools we have today are well geared up for remote working. Whilst I long for the days where I can meet people in-person again, I am deeply encouraged at how well people are working together, both within my team and those around me.

Humans have evolved to adapt. The current COVID-19 circumstance isn’t pretty, predictable or ideal, but it is sadly our new reality. I hope the tools and tips I have shared in this post will help you to continue to work as effectively with your teams as you did before.

If you have any questions, comments, or have tips of your own to share, I would love to hear them! Please post them below.

(Extra credit, kudos and thanks to my team for championing new ways of remote working so that I could share some of those tips in the blog and for featuring in the photos)