Navigating user research without access to users: creative approaches for insightful results

As user researchers, our role is to understand the needs and behaviors of users so that we can design effective products and services. In the user-centred design (UCD) world it is often said that a project team should always start with user needs. However, this attitude takes for granted user access. What do you do when you don’t have access to your user group? How can you attempt to fill this gap so that your team can progress forward?

In this post we’ll explore alternative approaches to conducting meaningful user research when direct user engagement is a challenge.

User-less Research:

There are many scenarios where it may not be feasible or ethical to speak to users. This may include legal restrictions or barriers, financial limitations or when your research includes vulnerable groups who can’t be reached.

In a recent project, I faced this dilemma myself. I was working on an internal-facing service where access to users was very limited due to business capacity and legal complexities.

As a result, I had to think creatively about how to get enough research insight to progress confidently in the right direction. In this article, I will outline the approach we adopted, and offer recommendations for anyone in a similar situation.

Research Methods:

One of the most accessible resources for feedback can be testing with your immediate and wider team.

In my project, this involved cognitive walkthroughs, and scenario and conversational testing as we were working on a scripted telephony channel.

Cognitive Walk-Throughs:

As a team we systematically analyzed each step of the design against GDS best practice. Then from the perspective of an end-user, we did the same to highlight areas which could be streamlined or improved.

We maximised this approach by ensuring diversity in the participants. We invited colleagues of different ages, from different roles, and individuals with disabilities or health conditions. This recruitment approach allowed us to mimic a broader user base.

Scenario Testing:

Using secondary research, we developed scenarios that were typical of telephony calls and then simulated them in research sessions. To achieve this, one team member acted as the caller and role-played certain caller profiles which we had developed through desk research. This included asking lots of questions, changing their answers regularly during the call, or speaking very fast or slow etc. The other team member would then act as the agent, using our service during the simulation.

These scenarios enhanced our team’s understanding of the agent experience, and highlighted content and design improvements that could be made.

Conversational Testing:

There is a large difference between how content needs to be produced in order to be spoken, rather than read. As our service was scripted, we spent a lot of time testing the content by reading it out loud as a team several times.

We would do this in groups and collaboratively document our insights in real-time.

This included ‘breath-testing’ where we captured any sentences which took more than one breath to communicate. Content like this often sounds clunky or long-winded when spoken. We also noted down any times where we deviated from the content on-screen, or where we stumbled reading out the information. This practice enabled us to make the script more conversational, engaging, and clear.

Expert Reviews and Proxy Users:

Another avenue we created to gain insight into our user group was creating a ‘co-creation’ group, consisting of expert and proxy users.

In this context, when we refer to proxy users, we mean someone who has had frequent engagement with actual agents and can therefore act as a representative of the user group. Whereas expert users are people who may not have frequent interactions with users, but they do have a strong understanding of the subject at hand.

In our project this included researchers who had worked with agents for a prolonged period, accessibility SMEs in the company and SMEs on the current systems being used by our agent group. We met monthly and were able to gain vital feedback by applying their learnings to our initial designs.

How to justify and communicate user-less research insights:

It is essential to reiterate that this article should not be taken as advocating for research without users, or even articulating that user research can be easily replaced. Rather, it attempts to offer an insight into an accessible interim approach to gathering insights, which can be used to provide direction in projects that are facing barriers to research.

On this topic, it is also worth noting the challenges a researcher can face in justifying this approach, whilst also ensuring thorough research is valued and prioritised. In my project, I had to repeatedly reiterate that this approach aimed to get as close as possible to real user feedback, but that it was not the same as the latter.

Without real user feedback, our assumptions remain unchallenged, and biases can influence results. To mitigate this, we regularly ran workshops to identify and validate the assumptions we were working with. We evaluated our confidence in the changes we were proposing and ensured that this was transparent to the client. We had to be clear that we were moving forward as best we could, but that we did not hold the confidence in our iterations that we would have had with access to our user group.

It is imperative that a transition is made to genuine user research as soon as it is feasible to do so. Indeed whilst we made considerable progress following this approach in our project, we still had considerable re-work to do once these barriers were lifted. This again stresses that user-less research should be seen as an aid to allow general direction, highlighting universal design issues to fine-tune functionality, but it does not offer deep insight into how to meet your user needs and truly understand their experiences.

Project Learnings: User research cannot be replaced, but it can be aided

The learnings from this experience have been invaluable.

On a personal level, it has reminded me to be creative in my research approach. Research can be playful, and there are many different methods you can use to gain the answers you need. It is important to look outside the box in your day-to-day job when you can and make sure you don’t automatically fallback on the more traditional methods without question. This can restrict the practice which is meant to be explored and experimented with.

Furthermore, it has been an important reminder to avoid unnecessary interactions with your users. Applying methods like a cognitive walkthrough or engaging in design crits in your community can be a great way to start your journey. By showing your users a more developed design, you will gain deeper and richer insights from the sessions, which cannot be gained without them.