As UX professionals we know the value of card sorting when building an IA or making sense of our content and we know that first clicks and first impressions of our designs matter. Tools like OptimalSort and Chalkmark are two of our wonderful design partners in crime, but did you also know that they work really well with each other? They have a lot in common and they also complement each other through their different strengths and abilities. Here are 3 ways that you can make the most of this wonderful team up in your design process.

1. Test the viability of your concepts and find out which one your users prefer most

Imagine you’re at a point in your design process where you’ve done some research and you’ve fed all those juicy insights into your design process and have come up with a bunch of initial visual design concepts that you’d love to test.

You might approach this by following this 3 step process:

• Test the viability of your concepts in Chalkmark before investing in interaction design work
• Iterate your design based on your findings in Step 1
• Finish by running a preference test with a closed image based card sort in OptimalSort to find out which of your concepts is most preferred by your users

There are two ways you could run this approach: remotely or in person. The remote option is great for when you’re short on time and budget or for when your users are all over the world or otherwise challenging to reach quickly and cheaply. If you’re running it remotely, you would start by popping images of your concepts in whatever state of fidelity they are up to into Chalkmark and coming up with some scenario based tasks for your participants to complete against those flat designs. Chalkmark is super nifty in the way that it gets people to just click on an image to indicate where they would start out when completing a task. That image can be a rough sketch or a screenshot of a high fidelity prototype or live product — it could be anything! Chalkmark studies are quick and painless for participants and great for designers because the results will show if your design is setting your users up for success from the word go. Just choose the most common tasks a user would need to complete on your website or app and send it out.

Next, you would review your Chalkmark results and make any changes or iterations to your designs based on your findings. Choose a maximum of 3 designs to move forward with for the last part of this study. The point of this is to narrow your options down and figure out through research, which design concept you should focus on. Create images of your chosen 3 designs and build a closed card sort in OptimalSort with image based cards by selecting the checkbox for ‘Add card images’ in the tool (see below).

The reason why you want a closed card sort is because that’s how your participants will indicate their preference for or against each concept to you. When creating the study in OptimalSort, name your categories something along the lines of ‘Most preferred’, ‘Least preferred’ and ‘Neutral’. Totally up to you what you call them — if you’re able to, I’d encourage you to have some fun with it and make your study as engaging as possible for your participants!

Limit the number of cards that can be sorted into each category to 1 and uncheck the box labelled ‘Randomize category order’ so that you know exactly how they’re appearing to participants — it’s best if the negative one doesn’t appear first because we’re mostly trying to figure out what people do prefer and the only way to stop that is to switch the randomization off. You could put the neutral option at the end or in the middle to balance it out — totally up to you.

It’s also really important that you include a post study questionnaire to dig into why they made the choices they did. It’s one thing to know what people do and don’t prefer, but it’s also really important to additionally capture the reasoning behind their thinking. It could be something as simple as “Why did you chose that particular option as your most preferred?” and given how important this context is, I would set that question to ‘required’. You may still end up with not-so helpful responses like ‘Because I like the colors’ but it’s still better than nothing — especially if your users are on the other side of the world or you’re being squeezed by some other constraint! It’s something to be mindful of and remember that studies like these contribute to the large amount of research that goes on throughout a project and are not the only piece of research you’ll be running. You’re not pinning all your design’s hopes and dreams on this one study! You’re just trying to quickly find out what people prefer at this point in time and as your process continues, your design will evolve and grow.

You might also ask the same context gathering question for the least preferred option and consider also including an optional question that allows them to share any other thoughts they might have on the activity they just completed — you never know what you might uncover!

If you were running this in person, you could use it to form the basis for a moderated codesign session. You would start your session by running the Chalkmark study to gauge their first impressions and find out where those first clicks are landing and also have a conversation about what your participants are thinking and feeling while they’re completing those tasks with your concepts. Next, you could work with your participants to iterate and refine your concepts together. You could do it digitally or you could just draw them out on paper — it doesn't have to be perfect! Lastly, you could complete your codesign session by running that closed card sort preference test as a moderated study using barcodes printed from OptimalSort (found under the ‘Cards’ tab during the build process) giving you the best of both worlds — conversations with your participants plus analysis made easy! The moderated approach will also allow you to dig deeper into the reasoning behind their preferences.

2. Test your IA through two different lenses: non visual and visual

Your information architecture (IA) is the skeleton structure of your website or app and it can be really valuable to evaluate it from two different angles: non-visual and visual. The non-visual elements of an IA are: language, content, categories and labelling and these are great because they provide a clear and clean starting point. There’s no visual distractions and getting that content right is rightfully so a high priority. The visual elements come along later and build upon that picture and help provide context and bring your design to life. It's a good idea to test your IA through both lenses throughout your design process to ensure that nothing is getting lost or muddied as your design evolves and grows.

Let’s say you’ve already run an open card sort to find out how your users expect your content to be organised and you’ve created your draft IA. You may have also tested and iterated that IA in reverse through a tree test in Treejack and are now starting to sketch up some concepts for the beginnings of the interaction design stages of your work.

At this point in the process, you might run a closed card sort with OptimalSort on your growing IA to ensure that those top level category labels are aligning to user expectations while also running a Chalkmark study on your early visual designs to see how the results from both approaches compare.

When building your closed card sort study, you would set your predetermined categories to match your IA’s top level labels and would then have your participants sort the content that lies beneath into those groups. For your Chalkmark study, think about the most common tasks your users will need to complete using your website or app when it eventually gets released out into the world and base your testing tasks around those. Keep it simple and don’t stress if you think this may change in the future — just go with what you know today.

Once you’ve completed your studies, have a look at your results and ask yourself questions like: Are both your non-visual and visual IA lenses telling the same story? Is the extra context of visual elements supporting your IA or is it distracting and/or unhelpful? Are people sorting your content into the same places that they’re going looking for it during first-click testing? Are they on the same page as you when it’s just words on an actual page but are getting lost in the visual design by not correctly identifying their first click? Has your Chalkmark study unearthed any issues with your IA? Have a look at the Results matrix and the Popular placements matrix in OptimalSort and see how they stack up against your clickmaps in Chalkmark.

3. Find out if your labels and their matching icons make sense to users

A great way to find out if your top level labels and their matching icons are communicating coherently and consistently is to test them by using both OptimalSort and Chalkmark. Icons aren’t the most helpful or useful things if they don’t make sense to your users — especially in cases where label names drop off and your website or app homepage relies solely on that image to communicate what content lives below each one e.g., sticky menus, mobile sites and more.

This approach could be useful when you’re at a point in your design process where you have already defined your IA and are now moving into bringing it to life through interaction design. To do this, you might start by running a closed card sort in OptimalSort as a final check to see if the top level labels that you intend to make icons for are making sense to users. When building the study in OptimalSort, do exactly what we talked about earlier in our non-visual vs visual lens study and set your predetermined categories in the tool to match your level 1 labels. Ask your participants to sort the content that lies beneath into those groups — it’s the next part that’s different for this approach.

Once you’ve reviewed your findings and are confident your labels are resonating with people, you can then develop their accompanying icons for concept testing. You might pop these icons into some wireframes or a prototype of your current design to provide context for your participants or you might just test the icons on their own as they would appear on your future design (e.g., in a row, as a block or something else!) but without any of the other page elements. It’s totally up to you and depends entirely upon what stage you’re at in your project and the thing you’re actually designing — there might be cases where you want to zero in on just the icons and maybe the website header e.g., a sticky menu that sits above a long scrolling, dynamic social feed. In an example taken from a study we recently ran on Airbnb and TripAdvisor’s mobile apps, you might use the below screen on the left but without the icon labels or you might use the screen on the right that shows the smaller sticky menu version of it that appears on scroll.

The main thing here is to test the icons without their accompanying text labels to see if they align with user expectations. Choose the visual presentation approach that you think is best but lose the labels!

When crafting your Chalkmark tasks, it’s also a good idea to avoid using the label language in the task itself. Even though the labels aren’t appearing in the study, just using that language still has the potential to lead your participants. Treat it the same way you would a Treejack task — explain what participants have to do without giving the game away e.g., instead of using the word ‘flights’ try ‘airfares’ or ‘plane tickets’ instead.

Choose one scenario based task question for each level 1 label that has an icon and consider including post study questions to gather further context from your participants — e.g., did they have any comments about the activity they completed? Was anything confusing or unclear and if so, what and why?

Once you’ve completed your Chalkmark study and have analysed the results, have a look at how well your icons tested. Did your participants get it right? If not, where did they go instead? Are any of your icons really similar to each other and is it possible this similarity may have led people down the wrong path?

Alternatively, if you’ve already done extensive work on your IA and are feeling pretty confident in it, you might instead test your icons by running an image card sort in OptimalSort. You could use an open card sort and limit the cards per category to just one — effectively asking participants to name each card rather than a group of cards. An open card sort will allow you to learn more about the language they use while also uncovering what they associate with each one without leading them. You’d need to tweak the default instructions slightly to make this work but it’s super easy to do! You might try something like:

Part 1:

Step 1

• Take a quick look at the images to the left.
• We'd like you to tell us what you associate with each image.
• There is no right or wrong answer.

Step 2

• Drag an image from the left into this area to give it a name.

Part 2:

Step 3

• Click the title to give the image a name that you feel best describes what you associate that image with.

Step 4

• Repeat step 3 for all the images by dropping them in unused spaces.
• When you're done, click "Finished" at the top right. Have fun!

Test out your new instructions in preview mode on a colleague from outside of your design team just to be sure it makes sense!

So there’s 3 ideas for ways you might use OptimalSort and Chalkmark together in your design process. Optimal Workshop’s suite of tools are flexible, scalable and work really well with each other — the possibilities of that are huge!

Further reading

• How to test mobile apps with Chalkmark
• What is mixed methods research?

Every day, people around the world use our research tools to craft better experiences for their users. Whether it’s a website for a new public library, an app for a self-driving car startup or even the layout of a physical retail store, our tools give researchers and designers everything they need to ensure the way people work, think and act are at the heart of every design decision.

We talk about our tools on a fairly regular basis (after all, we are quite proud of them), but this time we’re going to do something a little different. Here, we’re going to show you 17 creative ways to use OptimalSort, Treejack, Chalkmark, Reframer and Questions. Hopefully, we’ll inspire you to head off and start doing some more testing of your own. Let’s get started!

1. A/B test the structure of your website or mobile app

Tree testing is one of the best methods to assess the strength of your navigation structure, and Treejack is the best tool to execute this method. You can easily set up more than one Treejack study to run at the same time, allowing you to A/B test different navigation structures and pick a winner.

2. Run designs past your team

Ever struggle to get consensus from your team on a new logo or design? Use OptimalSort to solve the problem! Create a closed image sort with categories set up so your team can sort designs based on their preferences. You can then look at the results and determine the best path forward.

3. Improve your note-taking at conferences

Reframer is a powerful qualitative research tool, and most of what makes it so useful for usability tests and user interviews also makes it a great tool for taking notes at conferences. Once you’ve taken all of your notes, you can use tags to mark up different insights and then share the results with your coworkers.

4. Reduce the content on landing pages

Card sorting is a great way to work out if you have any redundant content on your landing pages. Let’s use the example of simplifying your homepage. You can ask participants to sort cards (containing homepage links) based on how often they use them. You could then compare this data with analytics from your homepage and see if people’s actual behavior and perception are well aligned.

5. Work out if your icons need labels

Determine if your icons are helping your users by testing whether they understand their purpose. Upload icons that you’re currently using (or even plan to use) to Chalkmark, and ask your participants to identify their meaning by using the post-task questions feature.

6. Use card sorting to build better stores

Card sorting isn’t just a technique for the digital realm. Run an open card sort with OptimalSort to figure out where items in a retail store should be grouped. If we use the example of a supermarket, the cards would be different food items and the ‘aisles’ would be the categories.

7. Make scheduling usability tests easier

You can use Questions as a scheduling tool by setting up a survey designed to ask people which times they’re available to come in for usability testing sessions. You can send out one link to every participant and view the results in a single location. Easy!

8. Test your information architecture (IA) in different countries

Did you know you can use our integrated recruitment panel to remotely research participants from all around the world? This is a great way to see how different languages, countries, cultures and backgrounds interact with your website.

9. Use heatmaps for first impressions

Chalkmark’s heatmap feature is an excellent way to get first impressions on your designs. You can see where your users clicked so you can get insights into what’s working (or not working) with your designs. It’s also fast, so it’s easy to iterate.

10. Run an empathy card sort

Empathy tests are a great way to find out whether your website, app or design is creating the right feelings with your users. Set up a closed card sort with a list of the words which could represent your design, then set up categories based on relevance. Show people your design and then ask them to sort the words into the categories which best match the experience.

11. Use Treejack to test your mobile IA

The number of people using smartphones to browse websites continues to grow, making the UX of mobile websites key. Use Treejack to test the mobile IA of your website so you can work out if people are getting stuck.

12. Find out how people get home

Use first-click testing to find out if a text link or an icon is the best choice for navigating back to the homepage of your website. A quick test in Chalkmark will improve your website and save you design work down the line!

13. Run multivariate testing

Ever heard of multivariate testing? It’s not too complicated. Basically, you just compare more than two versions of your studies to understand which version performs better with your audience. You can run this type of testing with Chalkmark and Treejack to determine the right design to iterate on.

14. Run a pizza card sort

Yep, you heard us. Running a card sort asking people which toppings are good for pizza and which ones aren’t is a great way to introduce people to the benefits of the card sorting method. Plus, it’s always fun to show off the results on a Friday afternoon in the office.

15. Use Treejack to improve your SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is an important part of any modern website, with an SEO-tuned website much more likely to show up in search results. There are many factors that go into SEO, but one of the most important is a website’s navigation. Use Treejack to improve how people navigate through your website and you’ll likely see your search engine ranking improve.

16. Use Reframer as a field assistant

Login to your Optimal Workshop account on your laptop and get out into the field with Reframer! When you’re out conducting usability tests or user interviews with people away from your office, having Reframer makes it much easier to collect all of the necessary data. Once you’re back, use Reframer’s analysis features to make sense of your findings.

17. Test your paper prototypes

How are you supposed to test your paper prototypes when your users are spread all around the world? Well, you can simply take a photo of your prototype and use Chalkmark to remote test it with your users. Easy.

Wrap up

So that’s our list of 17 creative ways to use our tools. Have you got any of your own? If you do, don’t hesitate to click the little Intercom chat bubble in the corner of your screen and let us know! We always love to hear from you.

If you haven’t yet had the chance to play around with our 5 tools, you can try them for free - forever - by signing up here (no credit card required). Don’t just take our word for it, either. Check out these case studies from Xero and Intercom to learn about how 2 organizations managed to significantly improve different areas of their businesses.

At Optimal Workshop, we're always looking to further the practice of user research. That's why we developed a powerful set of user research tools focused on quantitative and qualitative user testing.

This past year was a big one for us. We attended UX conferences all over the globe and met with researchers and designers in all sorts of organizations. We also continued to build up a solid list of best-practice tips from our community.

That’s what this article is all about – sharing our top user research tips. Some of these are as time-tested and true as the practice of user research itself, and others are starting to take off. Let’s dive right in, but if you’ve got any of your own, feel free to let us know!

1. Extend an olive branch to those unfamiliar with user research

In an ideal world, user research would sit at the heart of every organization. It’s a practice that benefits other teams and specializations and improves itself thanks to outside input. But, building those bridges isn’t always easy – especially if the practice of user research is still quite new within a company.

So what’s the best approach? It’s as simple as extending an olive branch to relevant areas of the organization. Typically, this means product, marketing, sales and data science teams. At Optimal Workshop, we’ve found that a great way to break these inter-team barriers down is simply by going out for a coffee and talking about the ways in which your two disciplines can collaborate.

If you’re interested in learning how to explain the value of user research, check out this article we wrote here.

2. Understand the value of a combined research and data science team

Research and data science are often siloed within organizations, but this is a missed opportunity. Data allows you to identify problems and dismiss assumptions, helping you to figure out what to do next. Sound familiar? User research and data science use different methodologies to answer the same questions, and when combined together the outputs can be much more fruitful. As speaker Mila Dymnikova said at UX New Zealand this year: “Data science can add a competitive edge to your UX team”.

We don’t have an actionable point for this research tip, other than to head over to your colleagues in data science and start up a conversation. If you don’t have any data scientists, think about the areas of your organization where people are utilizing data on a regular basis and start there.

3. Always establish clear research questions

Before you even think about running a usability test, it’s important to establish your research questions. Creating these at the beginning of your project will help you identify which methods to use, what you’ll discuss with stakeholders and where you’ll be able to uncover existing data.

As for example research questions, here are 2 to get you thinking. Remember: research questions should be both actionable and specific.

• “How do people currently use the wishlist feature on our website?”
• “How do our current customers go about tracking their orders?”

4. Focus on facts, not opinions

Whether you’re having a discussion with a stakeholder, a designer or a user, it’s all too easy to interpret opinion as fact. Steve Krug, in a 2005 interview with BoxesAndArrows, explained this quite well: “One of the problems web teams face is that we all have a lot of personal experience as web users, so we all think we know what makes a site good”.

“As a result, most design discussions are full of strong personal opinions, usually disguised as facts… it’s very appealing to have someone you can turn to for definitive answers”.

Being able to discern between a fact and an opinion isn’t always easy, and it's something that takes time to master. Before you head into your next stakeholder consultation, try to recognize when someone may be voicing a personal opinion instead of an impartial statement.

5. Reassure your interviewees

Before you start an in-person user test, one of the best things you can do for your participants is to make sure they’re comfortable. You can do this by explaining what’s expected of them, that you’re not testing them (you’re testing the design/product) and to ask questions if they need to. After all, the user testing process is a two-way street.

This is partly why we recommend all user researchers take a turn in the
participant seat and go along to a user testing session.

This is a great video from Google Ventures on the user interview process.

6. Figure out the correct location

Before you book a meeting room for your next usability test, consider the importance of location. You may not want to book a quiet meeting room if the thing you’re testing is often used in a loud or otherwise distracting environment. Take an app for construction workers as an example. You may find that you get much more useful data by carrying out your usability test on a loud construction site, so you can see what your users will typically have to deal with when using your app.

7. Combine OptimalSort and Chalkmark

There’s no overstating the importance of card sorting when building an IA or testing first impressions when reviewing designs. That's why OptimalSort and Chalkmark are so useful. But, did you know you can use these tools together too?

Here are 3 of the ways you can combine OptimalSort and Chalkmark:

1. Test the viability of your concepts and find out which one your users prefer most
2. Test your IA through two different lenses: non-visual and visual
3. Find out if your labels and their matching icons make sense to users.

Check out the expanded article here where we explain each of the above approaches.

8. Use Reframer to make sense of your qualitative user research

Most qualitative research is, by its very nature, messy. Unlike the relatively clean, number-focused world of quantitative research, the world of qualitative research is all about the ‘why’. It’s exploratory, focused on reasons, opinions, behaviors and motivations. So how do you make sense of all this ‘messy’ data? Our qualitative research tool Reframer is one of the easiest ways.

Here’s how it works: When running a user test, store your observations in Reframer. Then, add tags to classify each observation. Tags might be things like sentiment (happy, sad, frustrated, etc) or based on actions or progress (succeeded or failed).

9. Understand the value of observers

Forget about lengthy presentations to your organization. Bringing people into your user testing sessions as observers (or notetakers) is one of the best ways to show the value of user research to others. Think about it. You’re able to:

• Put other people within your organization in front of your users
• Demonstrate the value of talking to users about how they use your products and services
• Build up a common understanding of what research is and why it’s useful.

Getting these people into your research sessions is as easy as asking. The next time you come across someone from sales, marketing or your product teams, ask if they’d like to come along to your next user test.

10. Share your findings within your organization

Research for research’s sake is only viable in certain organizations – typically institutions like universities and colleges. In most other instances, research should be socialized with the wider organization.

Of course, it’s also worth noting that research should be carried out with the support of other teams from the outset. That is to say, you don’t want to turn up to a meeting and drop 3 months’ worth of research on your marketing team. Ideally, you’d work with those other teams to figure out their needs, carry out the research, then communicate it back to them.

11. In a user interview, just listen

A user interview is an opportunity to hear real peoples' thoughts on your product or service or a particular problem you’re studying. To that end, listen! Of course you’ll need to ask your questions, but remember to sit back and let them speak as much as they need to. Jumping in whenever there’s a lull in the conversation will only mean you’re potentially cutting them off when they may have more to say.

12. Recruit diverse participants

It’s always a good idea to recruit a diverse range of participants when you’re running your user tests. Try and get a good spread of jobs or roles, experience with what you’re testing, ethnicity and gender. You may also want to consider recruiting people whose native language is not what you’re using in your product or service. Using recruitment services is a good way to capture a spread of people if you’re struggling within your traditional circles.

13. Take time to unpack testing sessions with your team

Once you’ve wrapped up a testing session, take the data back to your team and unpack it as a group. Analyzing the results of your test in a roundtable format will mean you’re more likely to pick up on more themes and patterns than you would alone. Of course, this can be a hard thing to do, especially if you’re used to working through your results alone.

We find it’s helpful to ask a range of different people within your organization, such as data scientists, sales staff and designers, in addition to user researchers.

14. Run a survey within your organization

User research is often about turning outwards to gather opinions from the people using your product – but it’s also a useful internal tool. Use the same methods and processes you practice on your users to gather internal data. For example, run a survey about the way research functions within your organization, with a focus on how other people think research should operate.

15. Don’t rely on your memory

It’s all too easy to get caught up in the moment during a research session and forget to take notes. But don’t rely on your memory for anything! Whenever you hear an interesting point or think of a good next step, note it down. This is partly why we recommend bringing along a guest notetaker to take over this job for you.

16. Get your users to tell you a story

Instead of asking your users direct questions, get them to tell you a story. This is a great way to learn about how they think about something from start to finish. It’s quite a simple concept. For example, imagine you want to better understand how your users buy projects from your online store. Instead of asking them a direct question about the checkout process, ask to explain how they go about purchasing a product online. Besides learning more about the area you’re interested in, you’ll find that they give you useful background information on the process that you can use as part of your research.

17. Get a mentor

This isn’t a user research-specific tip, but it’s one that’s worth mentioning all the same. Getting a mentor is one of the best ways to progress your career, as they’ll be able to help you figure out where you want to go and how to get there. A good mentor will also be able to point out development opportunities and even keep an ear to the ground for potential new jobs that might suit you. In a nutshell, a mentor will help you to improve.

18. Get a mentee

On the flip side, it’s also a good idea to consider taking a mentee under your wing. This type of relationship can be fruitful for both parties, with mentees able to gain much of what we discussed above, and mentors able to reinforce their own learnings by teaching them to someone else.

19. Remember: You are not your user

Back in 2010, in the early growth days of social media, Google launched a new product called Google Buzz. Everything seemed set for a great launch. The product had gone through internal testing 20,000 Google employees and it had significant buy-in. Unfortunately, Google Buzz launched with a feature that generated a number of complaints and had to be quickly taken out. Shortly after that, Google Buzz was shut down entirely.

There’s a key lesson here for anyone involved in product development: You are not your user! Also known as the false-consensus effect, Raluca Budiu explained it best writing for Nielsen Norman Group: “Designers, developers, and even UX researchers fall prey to the false-consensus effect, projecting their behaviors and reactions onto users.”

Avoiding this bias isn’t too difficult. Always keep your users front of mind, involve them in the design process and make a point to interact with them regularly.

Try our powerful UX research platform

Understanding the importance of user research is just the first step. To get usable insights that you can use to make decisions you need the right set of tools – and that’s why we’ve developed a suite of 5. OptimalSort can show you how people think the pages on your website should be grouped, and Treejack can show you where people are getting lost. Try them all for free here.

We take a look at three qualitative research methods which can be started quickly with a bit of planning, and minimal participants while delivering great data insights.

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What is qualitative research? 🤔

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The term ‘qualitative’ refers to things that cannot be measured numerically and qualitative research is no exception. Qualitative research is primarily an exploratory research method that is typically done early in the design process. It's useful for uncovering insights into people’s thoughts, opinions, and motivations. It allows us to gain a deeper understanding of problems and provides answers to questions we didn’t know we needed to ask. 

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Qualitative research can be viewed as the 'why' versus quantitative user research which uncovers the 'how' or the 'what' users want. Qualitative user research helps us uncover why people make decisions (and potentially much more).

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Here's three qualitative research exercises you can start today:

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1. Usability testing 👨🏼💻

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Usability testing is a research method designed to evaluate how easy something is to use by testing it with representative users. In most cases, this ‘something’ is a prototype of a website or interface. Or it could just as easily be an existing website or product that requires more understanding of how it is currently used to identify faults or issues.

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These tests typically involve observing a participant as they work through a series of tasks involving the product being tested. It’s a good idea to bring a notetaker along, so you can focus on asking questions. After you’ve conducted several usability tests, you can analyze your observations to identify the most common issues.

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This can be a very practical start to the user research process. Observing, questioning and noting how a user interacts with your product in a very real environment can offer up some fantastic insights. 

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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Usability testing is done in a real world environment which means you need your participant to complete tasks on a laptop or mobile phone. Ideally this is in a controlled environment, an office or space that can be managed. Usability testing relies on the facilitator being present. So, to start you only need five participants which helps as it isn't too many people to find and set up.

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What to note: Usability testing is a great way to get an understanding of how exactly the participant interacts with the product. Note how they complete tasks, where their frustrations may be. Also look beyond what they are saying and observing what they are doing.  This is invaluable to get the full picture of how they feel and analyzing the user experience.

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2. Contextual inquiry 👀

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Contextual inquiry is the observation of behaviours and reactions when users undertake specific tasks. By observing and paying attention to unspoken communication, you can uncover insights into behaviour and even expectations.

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Giving the participant a set of tasks and observing how they complete these can be quite enlightening. Often what we do can be quite different to what we say we are doing. 

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By noting all of this during the testing session, and keeping our notes factual, they can provide context for why the participant may have changed their decision in a task or even abandoned it entirely.  Ensuring that you don’t try and infer why they are feeling a certain way, and how that may influence their decisions is important to gaining insights.

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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Like usability testing this method only needs a minimal one-on-one environment to get started.  A facilitator sets the test and observes the participant interacting with the product. You can start with as few as five participants, which means getting started with qualitative testing can be very quick to implement.

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What to note: How they move or act while they complete tasks.   Do they cross their arms, scratch their head or  even sigh?  Little things like trouble using the keyboard, can be implicit in how well they interpret the website.

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3. User interviews 👩🏻💻📓✍🏻💡

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User interviews are one-on-one facilitated conversations that are used to gain in-depth understanding of behaviours, opinions, and attitudes towards a product.

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Building a relationship with the participant can be valuable, allowing the conversation to flow, and remove barriers. Interviews are an excellent opportunity to ask questions as well as dig deeper into the detail.   They allow for follow up if further clarification be needed. Interviews are usually semi-structured with a list of open questions that are flexible enough to allow the interviewer to cover the required topics but also go wherever the conversation leads. 

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Interviews are also quite flexible because they don’t necessarily have to be conducted face to face. If time and resources are tight, they work just as well over the phone or via skype. Sessions can be recorded through note taking audio or video recording.

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If you want to find out more about how to do a phone interview, have a read here. 

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There can be a flow over of observational insights. This can be as simple as noting throughout the session, how they react to certain set tasks. Are there moments that they are frustrated? Do they turn back and look for another way? Or do they seem irritated by the hardware, the laptop, mouse or even the reflection on the screen? All valuable (unspoken) information on how and why the participant makes decisions.

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How many participants do I need to get started?

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As with our three qualitative research methods you need a minimal number of participants to really get started with user interviews. They rely on a facilitator that does one-on-one interviews with a set of predetermined questions. You can start with as few as five participants, and depending on the research they can be from inside or outside your company. But they should be as relaxed, and natural as possible, to allow for real responses and observations.

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What to note: User interviews are far more conversational than the previous two methods. You should have a script to work from, which will intend to uncover why your participant will want to work with your product a certain way. However, the interview allows some flexibility, with the facilitator able to dig deeper if needed, or change tack. Note the flow of conversation, and the various responses, as well as observed behaviours in a factual way.

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Reviewing your research 🕵🏼

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After completing your session it is just as important to review it. Spend the time while it’s still fresh in your mind filling in any gaps in information by reviewing the audio and/or video. Great note taking is vital and using a digital note taking software (like our very own Reframer) can make the whole process much simpler and easier, to record, review, analyze and share your data.  If you want more tips on how to take great notes in qualitative user research have a look at this.

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Delivering your data 🎁

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So, you’ve gone ahead and researched your product and you’ve got some amazing insights and data. What now? You need to pull it all together in a cohesive manner that breaks down what you’ve discovered and what it means. If you use our digital note taking software, Reframer, this can be fairly straight forward and streamlined. Having all of your notes, audio and video recordings, timestamping and observations in one place will allow the data to be generated and reviewed (and shared) swiftly. Pull together a report that can be shared among key shareholders and product managers. Present it in a way that allows your insights to clearly show where changes are needed, or improvements to the user experience can be made. It’s hard to argue with well researched data!

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Wrap Up 🌯

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If you always thought that qualitative research was too hard, or took too long, think again. Take a look at the Optimal Workshop platform and we can help you through the whole process, taking the pain out, and putting the insights in. 

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Ready to get started finding out how your users really interact with your product? Get started now, and lots of our products mean you can start today!