Last-Minute Remote User Research during Coronavirus
A case of last-minute adaptation from in-person studies to remote moderated research using Zoom’s remote control feature.
A long time ago, all the way back on March 11th, I had 8 in-person interviews scheduled for the next day, March 12th. I had my study plan and discussion guide buttoned-up, prototypes working smoothly, and my stakeholders were eager to observe the interview sessions. Things were fine and dandy. But for the rest of the world, things were anything but.
An email from our HR department came in that read something like this:
“This week, the COVID-19 outbreak came much closer to home for many of us in the United States…setting off more restrictive measures to keep people safe…San Francisco staff are encouraged to work from home for the next two weeks until further notice…
No external visitors in the office — This is business critical so no exceptions on this one.”
Relief was my initial reaction. I hate being squeezed up on BART every morning anyway. But soon thereafter, a quick realization:
“How will I do this user study now?”
Changing In-person Interviews to Remote Interviews Last-minute
I had scheduled moderated in-person studies because we were showing participants confidential concepts and prototypes to have people interact with as well. But if we are not allowed to have people come into our lab/office anymore, and the show must go on, what is a researcher to do?
Since we already had participants scheduled via a recruiting agency, the only change was doing this remotely.
- I scrambled to ask our participant recruiter to ask participants to do the study remotely over Zoom (luckily they all agreed, they preferred to be home during these unsafe times anyway).
- Set up Zoom links for stakeholders and participant to join (get a meeting code to share with them).
- Made sure they sign NDA and consent form before their scheduled sessions.
- Made sure they are able to use their own desktop or mobile device for the study.
Zoom’s Remote Control Feature
If you do not have access to fancy or expensive user testing tools, Zoom is a great alternative for hack-y remote research. From being able to record participants’ screens to having stakeholders join in to observe, my absolute favourite Zoom feature of all time has to be the remote control feature.
The remote control feature allows participants to take control of your screen, so they can interact with anything they see, or simply point to it with their finger or mouse.
If you have a prototype you want your participants to interact with, but do not want to share a link to it, this can really simplify the research for you and your participant. And if you’re afraid that a rogue participant might try to open up your bank statement (or worse), Zoom lets you abort control with just one click.
Any Other Tools for Remote Research?
Plenty. Any quick search will give you a myriad of options, including UserZoom, UserTesting.com, UsabilityHub, or dScout for diary studies. A remote study on Validately once took me 30 minutes to recruit 12 participants. It’s awesome.
For this case, I used Zoom because we already had participants scheduled, and they did not have to download Zoom to join the invitation link. Anytime participants do not have to download something to do your research is a happy time.
All participants had to do was click on the meeting link at the scheduled time and voila! I ask them questions, blah blah blah, share my screen, and give them remote control of my screen, and proceed as usual. All the while, stakeholders were able to join remotely to observe. Smooth.
But what if you don’t have any of those tools? And you’re broke AF? Well, if you’re conducting mobile studies and you need to see people’s taps or gestures, ask them to give their laptops a big ol’ hug. What I mean by that is literally, get them to turn their webcams on, turn their laptops around and hug it, like this. Super cheap and effective.
Remote research for the win…and for the time being.
This was a case where I could replace in-person studies by going remote. But what if it was a contextual inquiry? Ethnography? Or live intercept?
As far as I can tell, those types of research methods may be put on hold for the time being. Suitable alternatives could be remote diary studies (video) mixed with remote interviews or using body-cameras (my research on smartwatch usage at Google).
This is the time we can exercise our creative juices in problem-solving, use methods we haven’t used in a while, or just try something new. Sure, we may not get the visceral senses of doing in-person studies, but at the end of the day, it’s paramount we keep our participants safe, ourselves, and our families safe. Stay safe, and keep researching! Mad love.
Want to learn more?
If you’d like to improve your skills in User Research, then consider to take the online course User Research — Methods and Best Practices. Alternatively, there is an entire course on Usability Testing which includes templates you can use in your own projects. Lastly, if you want to brush up on the basics of UX and Usability, you might take the online course on User Experience. Good luck on your learning journey!
Thanks for reading! If you want more content on UX research, feel free to subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I make all things UX research-related to help you become the most badass UX leader.
