The Art of a Balanced UX Research
The phrase above is derived from a basic principle of ‘Lagom: the Swedish Art of Balanced Living,’ a lifestyle guide book written by Linnea Dunne.
The book defines the principle as having a balanced act and being aware of every activity somebody undertakes, it has been widely practised and utilized especially within minimalists.
An example of Lagom in everyday life would be to remove unwanted or unused items, and replace them with things that are functional and can be found instantly. The concept of work-life balance is also close to Lagom: rather than burning out your energy with a 60-hour working week and then getting stressed, Lagom encourages a balanced living somewhere in the middle.
In my daily work as a UX researcher, I also realised that the concept of Lagom could be applied to my work by balancing the technical steps of research: from determining the number of people/respondents involved to building rapport, interviewing users, and giving rewards to my respondents.
Determining the number of respondents
Can all kinds of conversations be called ‘interview?’ Certainly not. An ‘interview’ is an interactional communication between two parties with a specific purpose, involving questions and answers.
How many people should be included in an interview setting and what are their roles? Eye contact is a critical element in an interview, and having too many people in a single session will make it complicated for the research to remain ‘present’ in front of the interviewee(s).
I once interviewed a respondent while writing down their answers because I knew I would not have time to listen to the recorded files after. I could see that my respondent started to look bored and answered each question briefly as if he was trying to finish the interview as soon as possible. This is why I believe it would be much more efficient if you can get somebody else to be your notetaker. The formula is as follows:
(Researcher) + (Respondent) + (Notetaker) = Effective Interview
Another reason for limiting the people involved in an interview session is to prevent the respondent from feeling intimidated. When respondents feel intimidated, their answers might be biased and they might not tell the truth, especially when they have to try your product. From my experience, intimidated respondents tend to say “I like your product, it works well for me, easy to use, buttons are intuitive, and the interface looks overall good. On a scale of one to five, it’s a five-star product”.
In a single qualitative research project (interviews or usability tests), five respondents should be enough to gather insights from a group of users with similarities. For instance, when doing research on the behaviour of using e-wallet, I would get five respondents who are e-wallet users and five respondents who are not. Thus, there’d be ten interviewees in total from both sides.
Building rapport
The purpose of building rapport is to engage a good conversation with your respondent so the researcher can obtain an honest information. Usually, the best time to build rapport is during the first 5 minutes of the interview. You can ask how the respondent gets to the meeting location or how the traffic is. You can also ask about his work or hobbies. This technique can be done not only during the interview, but also before the interview.
One factor you need to ensure when building your rapport is the respondent’s ‘level of comfort’. Those who are too “comfortable” have the potential to become too talkative and they may talk about things far beyond the context or even be the one to lead the conversation. One of the ways to find out whether the respondent is comfortable before starting the interview is through checking their eye contact and their response to small talks. Respondents who already feel comfortable tend to be more courageous in maintaining eye contact with the interviewer and are more active in small talks.
The length of the interview
The truth is the more questions you ask, the longer it will take to complete a session. It also depends on what information you want your respondents to answer. If you aim to explore behavior, it can go up to an hour. The addition of another 30 minutes should be added when you add usability test scenarios. Each session should not exceed two hours because you and/or your respondent may lose focus.
On the other hand, the interview process that is too short may give a negative perception among respondents because they make an effort to come to the interview so you should spend a considerable amount of time (at least 45 minutes). Alternatively, if you only have a few questions and they do not require in-depth answers; it is better to do a phone interview instead. When I conducted an additional research to evaluate payment methods on Tokopedia to follow up on a recent study, I chose to call respondents who gave low scores to better understand the difficulties they experienced.
Reward
The easiest way to attract respondents is by rewarding them, and this is usually communicated when you invite them via email. However, if you offer too much reward, you will most likely get “reward seekers” or those who come to your interviews just for the sake of the gifts you’ve prepared. People like this usually only give friendly answers because they want to please you as the interviewer.
Too little reward will cause problems too as respondents spend both time and money to attend your interview. Because the attractiveness of the reward will highly depend on each respondent, I usually refuse to mention what they will get and say “cool gifts” or “our exclusive merchandise” instead.
To conclude, I learned that the principle of balance from Lagom is vital in research. Our role as researchers also involves determining the right length of time and the right amount of respondents to do the research with the ‘just right’ intensity. My experience can be different from other researchers in different industries and objectives therefore it is crucial to look back and assess the needs to determine how each research project can be efficient. Leave your comments below, and I will be delighted to find out how your experience relates to this matter.
