Fantastic tactics and where to use them
Scenarios, strategies and tactics for user research
Have you ever had one of those weeks where everything just goes as planned?
Me neither.
But we’re going to get through this, together.
Only separately because we’re supposed to be social distancing from one another right now.
Anyway, to help you without getting too close, I’ve described some all-too-common scenarios that we, as UX designers and researchers may run into when conducting research.
Each scenario has a strategy and at least 2 research tactics, along with a breakdown of how to carry them out.
Do you have to use them exactly as I’ve outlined? Absolutely not!
Mix, match and modify until you’ve found what works best for you and your methods.
The ultimate goal isn’t to ‘leave no stone unturned’, but to use the circumstances to your advantage, choose your battles, and do just enough research.
Scenario #1 Some is better than none
Your team suddenly needs to pivot. The situation is dire. Interviewees are extinct.
Strategy: Some research is better than none at all.
Tactics: Competitor analysis and Hallway testing.
Find a couple competitors who are already solving the problem, sign up for a free trial and run through their process yourself. If a free trial isn’t possible, and neither is a paid account, you can usually find their tutorial/support videos on how to use the software in their Customer resource centers or on YouTube.
Take the best bits, sketch a design or two and start hallway testing.
This is basically what it sounds like. You leave your office and try to make eye contact with your colleagues. The sucker that returns your gaze has just volunteered to look at your designs and give you feedback.
Do this about 5 times, give or take, depending on how complex the workflow is and how consistent the feedback is. Contradictory feedback generally warrants more tests, but the upper limit should be 7 to 10.
If it’s still very inconsistent, you might need to rethink your design.
Scenario # 2 Blood from a stone
You’re solving a problem for a user type that is cagey or difficult to coordinate with.
Strategy: Get everything you can out of interviewing a small number of people.
If possible, try to corroborate that qualitative interview data with quantitative data.
Tactics: Snowball sampling and triangulation.
Snowball sampling (or chain sampling) is essentially recruiting new people to interview through your existing sample group.
For example, you’re only about to get interviews with 1 or 2 people. When scheduling those interviews, ask them if there is anyone else on their team that perhaps does slightly different work than they or might have a different perspective who would be interested in joining the interview, or attending a separate one.
Or perhaps you’re even worse off and have no interviews at all and don’t know where to start.
Start with your PM, or check in with other teams at your organization. You will often find that someone has some insight into the problem you’re looking to solve, or they can refer you to someone who does. Just keep digging.
Triangulation is using 3 feedback methods to increase the validity and credibility of your data.
This sounds worse than it is.
Triangulation could be:
1. Reading relevant feature requests (your own companies and competitors)
2. Observing people
3. Interviewing people
Or it could be:
1. Collecting responses via a survey.
2. Your PM observing people or interviewing them.
3. A quantitative metric that appears to corroborate the qualitative research data.
It could even be 3 different people conducting the same type of qualitative research methods, independently of each other.
Scenario #3 Herding cats
Your sample group is large and/or contradictory.
Strategy: Target a large group of people, independent of each other.
Tactics: Divide and conquer (Survey and interview)
Getting a huge group of people together is difficult.
Also, getting a huge group of people together who vehemently disagree with each other is disaster. It’s like a holiday meal with the family, only there’s no holiday, or meal, and it’s just the family yelling over one another about memories of things that might not have even happened and eventually the neighbours call the cops and mom’s crying.
Anyway, what you want to do is write out your list of open-ended questions and send it out to a large number of people. Set up interviews with a select few who have provided particularly insightful or confusing answers.
Scenario #4 You are a user research god/goddess
You have plenty of time and an accessible sample group of users.
None can resist your focus group invites.
Strategy: Insightful discussion and Participatory action research (PAR).
Tactics: Expert interviews, focus groups, ideation and sorting activities.
If you’re new to these, consider an icebreaker activity that can double as research, like Photovoice.
Ask each participant to bring a picture, screenshot, or some other visual representation of a solution to the problem you want to solve.
Have each person share their image and why they chose it.
If you can combine your expert interviews with your focus group, that is great; everyone will have heard the same information at the same time.
If not, conduct your interviews before-hand and present the information to your focus group.
Focus group magic
It is so very important for everyone to feel as though their perspective is valid and welcome in group discussions, especially if they are new to this kind of activity.
I recommend using the “Yes, and…” rule with groups.
This rule suggests that a participant who wants to comment on someone else’s idea should accept what the other participant has stated (“yes”) and then expand on that line of thinking (“and”), thus suspending critical snap judgement that could inhibit communication within the group, while encouraging further discussion and brainstorming.
Bonus tip: Try to include an individual who has a tendency to bring up outlandish, controversial or otherwise bold ideas. The goal is quantity over quality and having one of these individuals among a group can help open everyone up and encourage outside of the box thinking.
For context, a magic candle whose light can recharge burnt out lightbulbs would be a valid idea during this kind of ideation session.
100 ideas in an hour
This number might be a bit intimidating, but your goal should be 100 ideas in an hour.
Why 100? You need to get people past their realistic ideas and into their unrealistic ideas, and then you need to get them past that. Beyond what they’ve already explored and considered as realistic and unrealistic; that’s where innovation hides.
Once your group has reached 100 ideas, cluster each idea into groups based on similarities and everyone dot votes on the favourites (2 or 3 dots per person).
Remote focus group? Is that even a thing?
If you need a streamlined or remote version of this, you can use something like https://funretro.io/
Word of warning:
I highly recommend you do not use the blurring feature for cards if you ideate in funretro.
It hurts ideation and discourages bold questions/statements.
How many times during ideation with sticky notes have you seen an idea someone wrote, and it reminded you/triggered an idea for you?
Or how many times have you held back because you weren’t sure what was appropriate, and then someone said something bold and you were like “ahhhhh I can say my thing now because I know it’s safe to that here.”?
Obscured cards prevent people from building on-top of one another’s ideas, which is core to ideation.
Know your enemies
Enemy Number 1: Nice People
Tactics they use to ruin your life: Ruinous Empathy.
Why they’re bad: Nice people waste your time and skew your data.
Defense: If you encounter a Nice Person™ while doing research, smile and thank them for their feedback, and then put them on your blacklist so they can never hurt you with their niceness ever again.
Enemy Number 2: The Whiner
(Let’s be fair, this is most people. Including us.)
Tactics they use to ruin your life: An aggressive barrage of complaints.
Why they’re bad: They overwhelm and distract you from solving you actual problem, taking you down rabbithole after rabbithole of agitation and things that have nothing to do with anything,
Defense: This one is tricky. The whiner tends to have a lot of valid feedback and, oftentimes the hassle is worth the insight they have.
Your best bet is to have patience, empathy, and a plan.
Set-up a timed-box interview with them, take notes, end the interview at the appropriate time and then follow up with them in writing. Provide a bullet point list of items you would like clarification or elaboration on, in writing.
Enemy Number 3: You and your assumptions about people.
Tactics you use to ruin your life: Designing solutions that don’t solve the right problem, or any problem. Heck, sometimes you generate problems.
Why you’re bad: You think you know your users (but you don’t).
Defense: User research.
