Run activity based interviews to maximize your time with users

By Isabel Boettcher, UX Researcher at Lucid Software

As a User Researcher, I’ve had the opportunity to run many user feedback sessions which has allowed me to hone my interview process along the way.

My biggest learning so far is this: as often as you can, include an activity.

In this article, I’ll walk you through three activities: an obstacle course, a journey mapping, and a mark up activity that you can use to make your interviews more engaging while surfacing deeper insights.

Activity 1: Obstacle course activity

Run an “obstacle course” activity when you are problem finding early in the design process. This is a great method to use when you need to understand why and when users are struggling with a feature that already exists within your product.

In March 2022, my teammate Vishaka began some work focused on redesigning the lines experience in Lucidspark. We had heard from many users that drawing lines, connecting shapes, and creating dividers were painful experiences. I helped Vishaka outline a research strategy that was aimed at understanding why and how each of these experiences was so painful.

To identify the pain points of using lines, she could have asked users to reflect on their experiences using lines and ask them to highlight moments that were especially frustrating.

Instead, she took her users through an “obstacle course” activity.

To set up this activity, Vishaka created a Lucidspark board set up with different line-related tasks. These tasks were meant to mimic ways in which a user organically uses lines in Lucidspark. In her interviews, Vishaka invited each user into a board and asked them to complete each task while she observed.

Here is a video highlighting one of the obstacles Vishaka took her users through. As you can see, users face great difficulty creating a divider with Lucidspark lines.

Here were our main takeaways:

1. This activity allowed Vishaka to observe where and how users were struggling with lines. As a result, she could more specifically understand and deeply empathize with their frustrations.
2. This activity was highly engaging. Beyond using these sessions to capture feedback, interviews are an opportunity to create relationships and build trust with users. This can only happen if you run interviews that users enjoy being in. Vishaka hit the nail on the head here.

Activity 2: Journey mapping activity

Run a journey mapping activity when you are conducting high level exploratory research. This method is great when you need to understand and map a user’s process or workflow over a period of time.

In October 2021 I was tasked with running an exploratory research effort focused on how our users were managing information in and out of the Lucid Suite. A traditional approach would have been to interview users about their information management tools and processes, but to increase engagement and evoke more detailed responses, I ran a journey mapping activity.

To set up this activity, I created a journey map template in a Lucidspark board.

This is what the template looked like before I worked with users to fill it out.

In my interviews I shared my screen to the blank journey map template. I told users that together we were going to fill out the map with the significant things they do in a work week. We worked one by one from left to right to outline each of their steps.

Next, we went back through the map we had created and discussed what was working well in each step and what was working poorly.

Then, we went through the map one final time and talked about where Lucid fit into each user’s workflow and if Lucid helped or prevented them from reaching their next step.

This is what the journey maps looked like once they were filled out.

To wrap up the interviews, I invited users into my synthesis process. I asked users to take a step back from the detailed map we had created and to summarize what stood out to them and what surprised them.

Here were my takeaways:

1. By working with users to visualize their process, my interviewees were better able to organize their thoughts. This allowed them to more thoroughly describe and analyze their workflow.
2. Because we built out each journey map chronologically and visualized pain points and bright spots contextually, half of my work was synthesized by the time I finished each user interview. This greatly sped up my research process and allowed me to produce insights quickly.

Activity 3: Mark up activity

Run a mark up activity when you are later in the design process and ready to explore concepts (not usability) and would like feedback on non-interactive prototypes.

My teammate Erica and I recently ran user interviews focused on testing four prototypes. Instead of showing users the new designs and asking for feedback, we instead ran a mark up activity.

To prepare this activity, we inserted a screenshot of each prototype into a blank Lucidspark document. In the interviews we invited each user into the document. As we walked through each prototype, we asked users to mark up the designs and add comments directly on top of them.

For confidentiality reasons, I cannot share the prototypes we used. However this image conveys how we started our interviews with bare prototypes and ended each session with prototypes marked up with user feedback.

Here were our takeaways:

1. By conveying to users that we wanted their help pulling apart our designs, users recognized that the prototypes were a work in progress. As a result, users felt comfortable providing honest critiques of the designs.
2. We shifted the dynamic of designer and interviewee to two collaborators. This switch led to more organic conversation and ideation.
3. Because we collected feedback right on top of the prototypes, half of our synthesis was done by the time each interview was complete. This allowed our team to rapidly iterate and push forward our designs.
4. Not everyone is great at verbalizing feedback. This activity allowed users to show us their feedback and communicate in ways that felt more natural to them.

In this article I covered examples of three activities you can run in your user interviews, but there are no limits to the variety of activities you can run. Just remember this: by giving users a tactile job to do, you can quickly break the ice and spend the bulk of your conversation uncovering deep insights.