By Mohini Kini, Senior UX Designer, Vymo
User research is like being a detective in a mystery novel. Just as a detective carefully gathers evidence, interviews witnesses, and uncovers clues to solve a case, user research involves gathering insights, observing behaviours, and understanding the motivations of users to solve the puzzle of delivering products and services that meet their needs and expectations.
“User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products — NN group
Why is user research important?
As a UX Designer, it is easy for me to advocate for user research citing clarity and validation as one of the major benefits of conducting it.
If I had to give a quick elevator pitch as to why user research is important, I’d say this:
Existing process and practices
Most of our users back then were limited to the Indian region with a small percentage of users in other Southeast Asian countries.
Our aim back then was to focus on the majority of the users. We were a smaller team and would resort to user research only when we felt stuck while making decisions or while starting off on a new feature.
How did we collect data/feedback?
User interviews
2-3 of us from the team would visit the offices of our users and spend an hour or two with them.
The questions we asked were around the app usage, their pain points, likes and expectations. Because the product was fairly new to a lot of them, these sessions would sometimes end up turning into a product demo and user education session.
We would make notes on our books or type it into a word document.
User surveys
We primarily used Google Forms for this.
We would share the link to these forms via email or SMS. Unfortunately, we received a very low response rate to this (~5%)
How did we store and communicate the feedback?
The data received from interviews was stored client-wise on a Confluence which was accessible across the company.
The survey data was first exported, analyzed and then a report was recorded on Confluence.
Pros and cons
Exploring and introducing new practices
When we decided to take User Research more seriously, we began to explore the different methods that are used by different companies. We read multiple case studies on how companies have improved their user-centricity through research and its communication.
We decided to set some basic foundational rules when it came to research.
-Having regular user research sessions with a predefined agenda
-Improving the data repository for easy and quick access
-Exploring innovative and diverse methods of data gathering
-Presenting the learnings in a captivating and attention-grabbing manner
-Transforming the insights into powerful action items
Regular sessions + Predefined Agenda
With the company growing and newer personas coming into the picture, it was a no-brainer that we needed to make this a regular feat. We decided to do this every quarter to give ourselves enough time to plan and execute the same.
Instead of treating it as a bonus/brownie points task, we added User Research as a full-fledged entry to our OKRs so that it would be taken more seriously and honestly considered while planning the team’s bandwidth.
Having a set agenda for user research sessions helps to maintain focus, ensure that important topics are covered, and allows for better preparation. It also helps in organising the research activities, allocating resources effectively, and ensuring that all necessary topics are covered.
We structured the Agenda to have the following – The purpose, methods we’ll use and expected outcome and deliverables.
For instance, our objective could be to identify and improve an existing issue. We could engage with users, conduct focus groups, distribute surveys related to the problem, and create a targeted report as the final deliverable.
Data repository
With regular interviews and data collection came a lot of manual effort in it’s maintenance. From noting the feedback, analysing it, grouping it and communicating it, the older ways didn’t fit anymore.
We decided to take help of a tool that could help achieve with the following:
-Centralised feedback management platform to collect and analyze feedback data from various sources.
-Easily accessible to everyone across the organisation
-Filter out and analyse data easily
-Auto-analysis of data with visuals
After a lot of research we ended up using Userbit for all our user research needs. Other tools that we really liked: Dovetail, Hotjar.
New and improved methods
Based on our experience, we decided to adopt new methods and enhance existing ones that can lead to deeper insights and more informed design decisions.
Open house
Just like in real estate, where an open house is a scheduled time when a house or other dwelling is designated to be available for viewing by potential buyers, we kept our doors open to our users.
The intention was to ensure our users that we want to work towards their benefit and give them an opportunity to talk to us freely about their experience with our product.
The prep
The prep involved the following steps:
-Obtain permissions from the clients to allow users to visit our office.
-Coordinate with the office logistics team to arrange space and refreshments for the session.
-Develop a targeted questionnaire based on user personas and demographics.
-Inform teams across the organisation about the desired atmosphere for the session, emphasize the importance of taking thorough notes, and encourage active participation.
-Seek approvals for tokens of appreciation to distribute to participants in the feedback sessions.
The experience
Since the first time, we have learned to interact better with the users. Over time, we have managed to hold open houses in our offices and in our client offices across different cities.
In one of the quarters, we managed to speak to 160 users across 5 cities within the country and that was an eye-opener for us. It contributed towards the product roadmap and helped increase user empathy across the organisation.
Surveys
Opting for a quantitative method of user research is always done with an intention to receive concrete and measurable insights into user patterns, trends, and preferences of our users.
While we did send surveys earlier, we tweaked the channel of sending the surveys, the questionnaire patterns and how it was stored.
The Experience
The prep involved the following steps:
We crafted concise and engaging questionnaires, shifting from open-ended questions to surveys to validate the patterns observed in qualitative feedback.
-To boost response rates, we revamped our survey subject lines, making them attention-grabbing instead of using plain “User Feedback Survey”.
-We enhanced survey engagement by sending them through push notifications, ensuring they wouldn’t get lost in SMS or emails.
-To expand our survey reach to clients in Asian countries, we translated the questions to accommodate a wider audience. This helped us achieve rich comparative analysis of our users across geographies.
Focus groups
We started doing focus groups in prime covid time where we had no choice but to get on zoom calls and talk. The main motive behind these focus groups was to gain nuanced insights into user attitudes, opinions, and preferences.
Focus groups enable participants to build on each other’s responses, generating a rich and diverse range of opinions and experiences.
The prep
-Approvals from clients heads to directly communicate with their employees
-Questionnaires with open-ended questions to initiate conversation and healthy debate among the users
-Checking which channel of video calling would suit everyone involved
The experience
-The users were in the comfort of being surrounded by people they know and when they saw someone voice their opinion, they felt more comfortable to share their ideas.
-It would sometimes get difficult to get users to join over a video call/zoom/google meet session. They would hesitate and some clients even had restrictions on accessing these links from their work systems.
Data analysis
Instead of completely relying on user feedback sessions and surveys, we started using data analytics tools.
This opened a whole new arena of perspectives and opinions which helped us not just again answers but also validate existing ones, choose better user groups and also build better agendas.
The experience
-We collected data from the data analysis tool and also from Appstore and Playstore review on a monthly/quarterly basis.
-We addressed prevalent issues brought up on these platforms by directly engaging with users to understand the root causes, ultimately leading to the resolution of issues such as app performance and battery drainage.
-The tools also helped us understand the time user spends on a particular screen, the most clicked button a screen, the most taken path from a particular screen etc,. This data could be filtered by client, platform, region, persona etc which gave us great insight into the similarities and differences.
Captivating presentation
With experience, it became increasingly clear that the teams outside the product team needed to understand the research reports in-order to understand the user’s POV.
We tried different innovative methods every month to communicate our research learnings and hence drive user empathy among the organisation.
Some of my favorite methods are listed below:
User stories
Every month, we would share details of a user in the form of their portfolio. This would include a little bit about them, their day-to-day activities, the fun they have, the challenges they face etc,. Putting a face to the user they all have been working for helped people relate to the user and the story telling manner of presentation made it easier to absorb all the data.
Monthly newsletters
-Based on the sessions and activities conducted every month, we sent a highly visual newsletter to the entire organisation.
-This newsletter comprised of the feedback sessions and links to the respective reports, highlights of the issues raised, praises made and also the current ratings.
-We had open rates of over 65% for these emails.
The Design Times (Our Newspaper)
-Highly inspired by the Daily Prophet from Harry Potter Series, we designed a newspaper comprising of interviews and feedback highlights.
-This was circulated on our messaging channels and groups and it received astounding praises from across the org.
Polls
-Engaging in friendly competition and striving for the right answers is always thrilling! We conducted polls on user behaviour, and employees from various teams eagerly participated by sharing their responses through messaging channels or groups.
-Afterwards, we revealed the correct answers along with links to detailed reports.
Impact and Action Items
While we focused on gaining enriched feedback and increasing empathy across the oragnisation, working towards the research data creating an impact was always our priority.
The goal is to turn data into information, and information into insight.” — Carly Fiorina.
The data reports created were stored region-wise and cross-linked based on the industry the client belonged to. This helped the PMs and other teams working on specifc problems easily find data and focus on the issues of concern.
We also created a report with all the clear and straight forward actions items. if something needed fixing, we called it out and assigned the task to the respective person. We created JIRA tickets for the same and tracked these to ensure that the problem is solved. Regular calls were scheduled to walk the team through the list of tasks and their status.
If we found that a particular issue was being brought up the most during a certain period, we would dig further into the issue and create an issue specific report and loop in the respective teams. It would then be this team’s responsibility to resolve this. Once done, we sent emails to the users to close the loop.
My learnings
During my interview, when the interviewee asked me which part of the design process I liked the most, my answer was user research. From then to now, there is soo much that I’ve learned and just realised that there is obviously more to learn. But here are my 2 cents
-User Research is not just about Plan→ Feedback Collection → Report Generation. The next steps involving … → Action Items → Follow Up → Closing Loop with Users are equally if not more important.
-The bond that you build with the users while talking to them goes a long way. If they feel they can trust you, they will open up more about their experience. Be patient and listen to them to understand and not just to take notes. (I cannot stress enough on eye-contact while taking the interview)
-You have to constantly learn and keep up with the trends. Reading case studies on user research sessions or talking to someone in the field will help you expand your knowledge.
-Curiosity is the key. Don’t stop at one line of information. Dig deep. Try to find patterns and relations between the quantitative and qualitative data.
-Don’t try to be a hero and handle everything on your own. You might burn yourself out. User Research is a collaborative effort. Make sure you involve your team, other teams and even your stakeholders.