Doing shadowings to improve user experience

This method turned out to be a good approach to get a better understanding of the needs and wishes towards your solution.

Designing software solutions for different customers is hard. Each customer offers different products and services and has different processes. So, you must create an experience that fits perfectly with their needs — but how to do it? A possible approach is doing a shadowing. It is about observing your user group in their familiar environment. Through a better understanding of their problems and pains, you will be able to develop a user-centered solution. In this article, you will get some insights into the learnings we have gained in customer shadowings.

Why do shadowings?

Shadowings and interviews gain us access to a feeling about the user and his needs because, in a shadowing, we got to know the working processes of the participants in their typical environment. We need to understand the problems of the users to find a solution that solves them specifically. Based on our observations during the shadowing, we get an idea of what the users really need.

Some cases have shown us that even they do not really know or see what is needed. For example, we shadowed a salesman who had to record visit reports from his customer appointments. He always recorded his visit reports directly after the customer meetings in order to remember what was discussed. Unfortunately, he had to type his record in the system again afterward. We figured out that there is a way to make his life easier. So, we create a solution where he can make voice notes via smartphone, so he does not have to write reports twice.

»Don’t burn time and money — do a shadowing!«

How many shadowings are needed, depends on the project scope, but usually it is between three and eight shadowings. Each of them takes half a day to a whole day. After that you already got findings helping you create a coherent concept for a user-centered solution — a time investment that will pay off, because most of the information you get, you cannot get from any other source. Without observing the user group before, you will spend more time doing iterations of your concept. In the worst case, you will develop a concept that does not fit in the use case of the user group. And this is the meaning of burning time and money.

How to prepare a shadowing

Before you start your observations, you need to know first whose ‘shadow’ you are going to be. At sovanta, we usually do workshops with our customers. With this addition to the preparation, we have a quite good picture of the situation. That is why the rest of the preparation is less time-consuming. Think about what to ask and what you would like to know from the users. It is useful to create a simple template for that purpose that gives you a supportive structure while doing the shadowing.

A template could look like this:

Furthermore, make sure that your participants are prepared for the shadowing. Based on our experience they often get insecure, because it feels like a test to them. That is why it is important to calm them a bit down and make the reason for your visit clear. We recommend sending them a short briefing so that they know what to expect. What could the briefing document contain? Here is an example:

What to expect?

• Short introduction.
• No test situation!
• Processes and situations in your daily work will be observed and documented.
• The observers are in the background while you’re doing your daily work.
• Afterward, questions can be asked.

Why do we do that?

• To get to know your needs.
• To get insights into your working processes and environment.
• We want to understand your pains and wishes.
• We want to create a solution that supports you.

Time to shadow

Take the time to introduce yourself. Tell the participant something about yourself, your job and the company you are working for. Explain to them the goals of the shadowing and the project so they understand that they also will benefit from it. In our experience, the small talk section improves the shadowing part afterward. There is one example in which we wanted to shadow an employee who recently joined the company. He was wondering why we chose him instead of someone who has worked longer in the company. The employee also thought that we were going to evaluate his work. After we explained our methods and our goal to understand the circumstances of a new employee. He agreed to our shadowing and felt better.

»Your participant has to understand that he’ll benefit from the shadowing.«

Don’t forget to ask for permission to take photos — they make your shadowing results more authentic during a presentation. Before starting the shadowing, plan the day together with the participant. Make sure you find a slot for an interview. When the shadowing part starts, you should stay in the background. While observing, you can note questions that you’d like to ask later. Keep in mind what you want to know from them. Sometimes a quick look at the template could help. Make notes for everything that might be interesting. If you have an idea, write it down immediately.
It’s beneficial to note remarkable quotes from the participants. You can use them in your shadowing results presentation. Your audience has a better understanding of the thoughts of the participant then. Which in the end helps to engage and involve business from a more user-centered design perspective.

To imagine how a shadowing can look like, my colleagues made a video about shadowings (it is in German).

Interview

When you do the interview part, you can ask all the questions you noted down while the shadowing took place. At the beginning, ask the interviewee to speak honestly about current processes and challenges. During interviews, thoughts and problems of the users can be identified as more detailed. It’s a great opportunity to get a deeper dive into the needs and wants of the user — interviews can fill the ‘gaps’ of shadowings. The participants want to get rid of things that bother them the most, make use of that to get more information.

» Interviews with focused questions to the end-user can help identify the expectations and requirements.«

A good time to do an interview is in the middle of a shadowing day or subsequent. It depends on how much time you have with the participant. In general, you should do some observation before the interview part starts so that you can ask questions that relate to something you recognized in the shadowing before.

What to do with the findings?

The shadowing ends and you have gathered a lot of information. It’s beneficial to align together with your project partner in a timely manner. We use a shared document to write down our shadowing notes so that you can work together on the same document. It’s helpful to use the same structure as in your shadowing template. Add the photos and user quotes. This document is the foundation to create a presentation with the shadowing results for your client. The presentation can also consider the first solutions ideas.

The concluding presentation could be structured like this:

• Personas: Working Environment, Media, Systems, Tasks, Pain Points and Wishes
• Wishes and Requirements: What was most often said?
• First solution concepts

We want to show you some insights of sovanta, especially the working processes behind our shadowings. So, this article shall only give you some inspirations while working on shadowing and hopefully motivate you to try it out. At the end, there are many ways to use shadowing. In our opinion, it is totally worth it to do them overall. Shadowing has been approved as a good way to get a profound view from the user’s perspective — a basic requirement for developing a user-centered solution.