And we’re live!— Conducting your online UX Research study
Part 3 of a 4-step guide on how to gain impactful insights using remote user research
Doing groceries is a part of everyone’s daily life, at Picnic it’s our mission to build a grocery shopping experience which people love to use. To achieve this goal, our User Experience team in Amsterdam is conversing with Picnic users on a weekly basis to uncover their needs and wants, explore design directions and validate assumptions and solutions.
This article is the third part of a 4-step guide on how to get you started with setting up a remote user research practice in your organisation. Each piece will be accompanied by hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Use these links to go straight to any of the other parts:
Now that all the preparations are done, it’s finally time to start researching. Because of all the work you’ve done before, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of the the logistics.. While I could probably write an entire piece just about conducting user interviews, let’s walk through some quick tips to get started with conducting remote interviews and using Lookback.
Involving the stakeholders
Before starting, make sure to communicate the participant schedule to your colleagues. For project stakeholders, it can be really useful to join (at least some of) the user research activities themselves, so they can already experience a couple of user reactions first-hand. Tools like Lookback make this step easier than ever, allowing colleagues to join a session by clicking a link. Since participants can only see the interviewer, observers can freely jump in and out anytime. It’s like one of those fancy one-way mirrors like they have at expensive UX labs and in detective series! 🕵️♂️
For project stakeholders, it can be really useful to join the user research activities themselves, so they can already experience a couple of user reactions first-hand
Doing the interview
One final thing before we actually start. At the beginning of the session, try not to jump straight into research mode. Instead, try to set a welcoming atmosphere, like you would do when meeting in real life. For example, I like to shortly thank the participants for their time and effort joining the session, to introduce myself and to tell more about the purpose of the research. Even when people are in the comfort of their own homes, it’s still very valuable to have a little chitchat and make them feel at ease.
So now it’s time to really start. You can mostly conduct your user interview like you would normally do, except this time you’re empowered by the tools that Lookback has to offer. For example, you can take time-stamped notes, chat with colleagues to see if they have extra questions and precisely see where participants are touching their screens when using a prototype. The combination of all these functionalities makes doing remote user research a joy for anyone who’s empathising with users on a regular basis.
You can take time-stamped notes, chat with colleagues to see if they have extra questions and precisely see where participants are touching their screens when using a prototype
When you’ve covered all topics that are part of your interview, make sure to briefly summarise major findings and key opportunities together with the user. Often, these final reflections gain even deeper insight into what you’re trying to find out. This moment of reflection can also result in insightful and compact video snippets to share with your team later on.
When concluding your interview, make sure to give a final and major shoutout to the participants, to thank them for all their time, effort and input.
💡 4 hands-on tips
- Naturally, people are going to forget about the time or about the interview at all. When someones not arriving in the digital “waiting room” for 3 minutes I like to give them a quick call. Don’t worry, people generally don’t mind the little reminder at all.
- If you’re planning on collecting personal data or recording the research session, make sure to tell your participants upfront. For example, our prototype always starts with a simple digital consent form.
- Marvel and Lookback work great together! If there’s a bug in your prototype, any changes in your Marvel prototype will directly be reflected in your Lookback session. When discovering a simple usability issue in your design, you could even ask the UX designer to make some small changes, so you’re able to test these with the next participant already.
- Loyal users of your product or service are likely to have come up with many ideas on how they think things could be improved. Although you are looking for answers to specific research, always make sure to give participants some room to ventilate their ideas and feel listened to. I like to give people an opportunity for such a “braindump” at the end of every session to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the timing of the rest of the interview. Also, think of a way to effectively communicate this stream of ideas to your team.
The advantages of remote UX Research and why it’s not perfect
Over the past year, I’ve become a great fan of remote user interviewing for a number of reasons. It’s great how remote studies enable researchers to connect with people who could not have joined otherwise. Anyone who got around 40 minutes to spare can already be of great value. Since people are able to join from the comfort of their own homes, while using their own devices the settings quickly feels natural and informative. Also, for the researcher remote studies provide a lot of flexibility, since you can basically work from anywhere and save a lot of travelling time.
Still, I think we’re all looking forward to the moment when we can start alternating remote research with actual in-person studies again. There’s something about face-to-face interactions, which even Lookback can’t replace.
Cheers! By now, you’ve completed a couple of remote interviews, probably gained a lot of insights and eager to share this with the right people. Next up in our series on remote user research is more on how to turn this knowledge into actionable insights, ready to be shared! . Click here to continue reading.
