Fieldwork UX research | Hyper Island
How might we create a feature that delivers effortless positive change to the world?
The goal of this project was to find opportunities for innovation in the “How might we…” statement above by using the first two steps of the design thinking process. Based on our findings and insights, we would then give recommendations to an imaginary company. To do this though we first had to understand our users and their problems. We did this by empathizing with the users and then defining problems to solve or opportunities for innovation.
A model that details this process is the Double Diamond created by the British Design Council in 2005. In this project we focused on the first diamond and started with gathering data about the users through qualitative and quantitative research.
Qualitative research
Collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (text, video, or audio) to understand concepts, opinions and experiences of users.
Target group
In addition to the HMV statement we got a persona to use as a starting point to define our target groups.
Raven (35) wants to create a better world, but doesn't have time or energy to keep up with everything. She plants trees and donates to charity. Injustice and climate change upsets her, but she doesn't know how to take her actions to the next level.
Wants
– Do good for the environment
– Do “armchair activism”
– Contribute in an effortless way
– Keep up to date on news
– Be efficient and save time
– Share actions and inspire friends to take action
Does
– Donates to charity
– Recycles (but finds it time consuming)
– Rarely takes the bus (the car is more convenient)
Kick off
Based on Raven, we filled out a kick off board where we defined (made assumptions about) our target groups and their potential needs. We also tried to come up with rough features and ideas that could be part of a future product. As a last step we tried to describe how these features/ideas could benefit a business behind such a product and what motivation a business could have for making these products. Since we didn’t have a company, this section didn’t get a lot of attention, but in a real project it would definitely be important to focus on this as well.
Before creating my hypotheses I prioritized the user needs on an axes of important/unimportant and known/unknown to see which needs I had to put more focus on in the interview.
- It should be fun, meaningful and challenging, so they want to use it often
- The user should be able to measure how they are doing
- It should be easy to connect and/or share with others
- There should be an attainable goal, something to work towards
- It needs to be free or low cost
- It needs to be easy and quick to use
Based on the needs I created hypotheses that I used as departure points to formulate questions for the user interviews. I followed this formula:
Hypothesis (We believe…) → The experiment (We will know we are right or wrong when…) → User questions (to validate/invalidate hypothesis).
This helped guide me in creating questions that were aimed at getting the person I interviewed to (hopefully) reveal information that could relate to my hypotheses.
Reflection: It was difficult to define needs and form hypotheses when the topic was so fluffy. In retrospect I feel my hypotheses were too generic. Since they were the starting points for my questions, the questions also became generic.
Card sorting ideas
To get more detailed feedback during the interviews we also used a card sorting technique. I created boards with 3 columns named “Love it”, “Maybe” and “No”. I then added sticky notes with possible features and rough ideas. I used this at the end of the interview. I first explained what each feature/idea meant, then I asked the user to sort them into categories while they told me why they would put them in a certain category. This gave me a better understanding of their thought process and for some users it was also easier to talk more freely, as it was more tangible.
Some findings from the card sorting:
– Gamification was not popular (it felt like a waste of time)
– Anything with an aspect of commitment was a stress factor
– Flexibility was important
– Physical activity was more popular than passive activity
– Calendar or reminder function was a stress factor
Reflection: When creating ideas for the card sorting I made the mistake of not putting enough emphasis on the fact that my target group wanted something effortless. A lot of my ideas were far from effortless. However I kept them anyway to see what kind of reactions I would get. It turned out that most users I interviewed preferred to do a physical activity instead of donating money or doing an online activity, as long as the activity was aligned with an interest they already had.
Finding users: Screener survey
To find the right target group for the user interviewss we created screener surveys that we used to attract and filter relevant users. This was a simple survey, just asking for age, gender and a few interests before asking if they would like to take part in an interview online.
Reflection: After conducting the interviews I thought that I should have added an option in the survey where people could indicate if they were extrovert or introvert, as this made a huge difference during the interviews. I should also probably have screened better for people who were really involved in the subject. Although all my candidates were interested in the topic, no one was super passionate about it.
Interview guide
To help us keep track during the interviews, we created interview guides with all the hypotheses we wanted to validate and the questions we wanted to ask. This worked as a reference and reminder so we didn't loose our way during the interviews.
User interviews
I interviewed 5 people in total, 3 women and 2 men. I had scheduled 6, but one canceled last minute, so it was definitely useful to have scheduled more than the minimum.
- Sara (43) speech therapist, single, no children
- Julie (45) IT developer, single, no children
- Karianne (40) teacher, in a relationship, no children (but a dog)
- Oliver (44) developer, single, no children
- Gaute (45) teacher, single, no children
Before asking the main questions, I set the tone by introducing the project and myself. I had the user sign a NDA and explained how the interview would go. If the user agreed to recording sound or video, I would start this as well.
During the interview it was important to remember to build rapport by using the arch approach (intro, contextual questions, main questions, follow up questions, debrief), ask open questions, learn the guide by heart, make eye contact, bounce questions back, take notes, watch body language, shut up and give the user time to think.
After each interview I summarized the main points while they were still fresh in my mind.
Reflection: I mostly interviewed people I knew. This was more problematic than I had anticipated. It was hard to keep it professional. If I saw they struggled with a question, I wanted to help them out by giving examples, but that would have influenced the conversation which could have affected the results. It was also difficult to move on to the next question in a natural way if the user was an eager talker. Another potential problem I realized a bit late was that none of my users had children. This could have affected how they answered in terms of free time and focus in life.
Quantitative research
Collecting and analyzing numerical data, used to find patterns, make predictions and generalize results to wider populations.
The users I interviewed were single and didn’t have kids. This got me to worry that some of their answers could be because they had more free time on their hands. Since I didn’t get much data from my first screener survey, I decided to do a new survey to see if any of my insights happened on a bigger scale or with people in other circumstances. It turned out that even if people were in relationships or had kids, the majority still answered the same.
- 70% of my respondents are in my target age
- 66% female, 35 % male
- 76% in relationships
- 50/50 having children/no children
- 70% working
- 64% had volunteered before and would do it again
- 79% wants to do something physical
- 88% care a lot about the environment
- Motivating factors was: helping others, expanding perspective, using skills and meeting new people.
I got 44 responses. Most of the participants were in my target group so this supports my earlier findings that my users prefer to do physical activities instead of online or donation based activities. It also support the fact that people want to feel useful, be social and learn new things.
Synthesizing
After finishing the interviews I went through all the notes and recordings looking for extracts that could validate or invalidate my hypotheses. I logged them into a board next to the hypotheses and extracted quotes from each of the interviews.
Insights and principles
Using this system I looked for quotes that could validate or invalidate all my hypotheses. I also found information that didn’t validate or invalidate any of my hypotheses. These finding I added separately and recorded them as additional quotes/insights.
I grouped the quotes validating one hypothesis and from each group I then created a principle that the company should follow when they explore ideas in the next stage. I also gave each principle a confidence rating based on how many users talked about it. Finally I gave a recommendation for each hypothesis.
Several of my insights led to principles and recommendation to do workshops to explore ideas further, but instead of recommending nine steps, I decided to choose the most important insights and simplify my recommendations. I’m doing this at the end of this article, but here are my initial recommendations connected to each hypotheses.
Final recommendations
My initial hypotheses were quite evident and generic so I didn’t discover anything groundbreaking from them, but I discovered this:
My original HMW statement, which emphasized effortless, didn’t fit my user needs.
Both during the interviews and in the survey, it became clear that people wanted to take a more active part in improving the world, instead of doing something effortless online. There was also a recurring theme that people were motivated by the social aspect of volunteering/helping out.
Another thing I discovered, not tied to my hypotheses, was an overall opinion that to change the world we need a shift in global politics.
These insights lead me to recommend the following:
- Run a concept workshop to find out how they might change their direction based on the findings that the users feel a need for global political change and active/physical contribution (also keeping in mind that the users are motivated by the social aspect).
- Interview/card sorting. Based on results from this workshop, do new interviews using card sorting with ideas from the workshop to see what might “fly”.
- Run a survey. If some ideas generate good responses, run a survey to see on what scale they might be interesting for a larger user group.
- Prototype/test. If any of the ideas generate enough interest, create a prototype and test on relevant users to see if it should be developed further.
Closing reflections
This project started in a rush and my needs and hypotheses were created in a state of panic. Since they were the foundation of everything that followed, it wasn’t a great point of departure. Due to this I feel that my final recommendations are unspecific and vague. I’m not sure I would be happy with these recommendations had I been the company or stakeholder ordering this research. Despite this though, it has been a very educational and inspirational journey and I feel I now have a much better understanding of the overall process and how to use the different tools and methods to get the most out of any future UX research projects. I’m happy with my efforts and I’m looking forward to see how everyone else have solved it. Hopefully I will learn even more from them.
