Why user research is essential for product development

It’s been a long day. Scratch that - it’s been a long week! Admit it. You loved every second of it.

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Twelve hour days, the mad scramble to get the prototype ready in time, the stakeholders poking their heads in occasionally, dealing with no-show participants and the excitement around the opportunity to speak to real life human beings about product or service XYZ. Your mind is exhausted but you are buzzing with ideas and processing what you just saw. You find yourself sitting in your war room with several pages of handwritten notes and with your fellow observers you start popping open individually wrapped lollies leftover from the day’s sessions. Someone starts a conversation around what their favourite flavour is and then the real fun begins. Sound familiar? Welcome to the post user testing debrief meeting.

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How do you turn those scribbled notes and everything rushing through your mind into a meaningful picture of the user experience you just witnessed? And then when you have that picture, what do you do next? Pull up a bean bag, grab another handful of those lollies we feed our participants and get comfy because I’m going to share my idiot-proof, step by step guide for turning your user testing notes into something useful.

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Let’s talk

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Get the ball rolling by holding a post session debrief meeting while it’s all still fresh your collective minds. This can be done as one meeting at the end of the day’s testing or you could have multiple quick debriefs in between testing sessions. Choose whichever options works best for you but keep in mind this needs to be done at least once and before everyone goes home and forgets everything. Get all observers and facilitators together in any meeting space that has a wall like surface that you can stick post its to - you can even use a window! And make sure you use real post its - the fake ones fall off!

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Mark your findings (Tagging)

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Before you put sharpie to post it, it’s essential to agree as a group on how you will tag your observations. Tagging the observations now will make the analysis work much easier and help you to spot patterns and themes. Colour coding the post its is by far the simplest and most effective option and how you assign the colours is entirely up to you. You could have a different colour for each participant or testing session, you could have different colours to denote participant attributes that are relevant to your study eg senior staff and junior staff, or you could use different colours to denote specific testing scenarios that were used. There’s many ways you could carve this up and there’s no right or wrong way. Just choose the option that suits you and your team best because you’re the ones who have to look at it and understand it. If you only have one colour post it eg yellow, you could colour code the pen colours you use to write on the notes or include some kind of symbol to help you track them.

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Processing the paper (Collating)

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That pile of paper is not going to process itself! Your next job as a group is to work through the task of transposing your observations to post it notes. For now, just stick them to the wall in any old way that suits you. If you’re the organising type, you could group them by screen or testing scenario. The positioning will all change further down the process, so at this stage it’s important to just keep it simple. For issues that occur repeatedly across sessions, just write them down on their own post its- doubles will be useful to see further down the track.In addition to  holding a debrief meetings, you also need to round up everything that was used to capture the testing session/s. And I mean EVERYTHING.

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Handwritten notes, typed notes, video footage and any audio recordings need to be reviewed just in case something was missed. Any handwritten notes should be typed to assist you with the completion of the report. Don’t feel that you have to wait until the testing is completed before you start typing up your notes because you will find they pile up very quickly and if your handwriting is anything like mine…. Well let’s just say my short term memory is often required to pick up the slack and even that has it’s limits. Type them up in between sessions where possible and save each session as it’s own document. I’ll often use the testing questions or scenario based tasks to structure my typed notes and I find that makes it really easy to refer back to.Now that you’ve processed all the observations, it’s time to start sorting your observations to surface behavioural patterns and make sense of it all.

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Spotting patterns and themes through affinity diagramming

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Affinity diagramming is a fantastic tool for making sense of user testing observations. In fact it’s just about my favourite way to make sense of any large mass of information. It’s an engaging and visual process that grows and evolves like a living creature taking on a life of its own. It also builds on the work you’ve just done which is a real plus!By now, testing is over and all of your observations should all be stuck to a wall somewhere. Get everyone together again as a group and step back and take it all in. Just let it sit with you for a moment before you dive in. Just let it breathe. Have you done that? Ok now as individuals working at the same time, start by grouping things that you think belong together. It’s important to just focus on the content of the labels and try to ignore the colour coded tagging at this stage, so if session one was blue post its don’t group all the blue ones together just because they’re all blue! If you get stuck, try grouping by topic or create two groups eg issues and wins and then chunk the information up from there.

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You will find that the groups will change several times over the course of the process  and that’s ok because that’s what it needs to do.While you do this, everyone else will be doing the same thing - grouping things that make sense to them.  Trust me, it’s nowhere near as chaotic as it sounds! You may start working as individuals but it won’t be long before curiosity kicks in and the room is buzzing with naturally occurring conversation.Make sure you take a step back regularly and observe what everyone else is doing and don’t be afraid to ask questions and move other people’s post its around- no one owns it! No matter how silly something may seem just put it there because it can be moved again. Have a look at where your tagged observations have ended up. Are there clusters of colour? Or is it more spread out? What that means will depend largely on how you decided to tag your findings. For example if you assigned each testing session its own colour and you have groups with lot’s of different colours in them you’ll find that the same issue was experienced by multiple people.Next, start looking at each group and see if you can break them down into smaller groups and at the same time consider the overall picture for bigger groups eg can the wall be split into say three high level groups.Remember, you can still change your groups at anytime.

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Thinning the herd (Merging)

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Once you and your team are happy with the groups, it’s time to start condensing the size of this beast. Look for doubled up findings and stack those post its on top of each other to cut the groups down- just make sure you can still see how many there were. The point of merging is to condense without losing anything so don’t remove something just because it only happened once. That one issue could be incredibly serious. Continue to evaluate and discuss as a group until you are happy. By now clear and distinct groups of your observations should have emerged and at a glance you should be able to identify the key findings from your study.

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A catastrophe or a cosmetic flaw? (Scoring)

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Scoring relates to how serious the issues are and how bad the consequences of not fixing them are. There are arguments for and against the use of scoring and it’s important to recognise that it is just one way to communicate your findings.I personally rarely use scoring systems. It’s not really something I think about when I’m analysing the observations. I rarely rank one problem or finding over another. Why? Because all data is good data and it all adds to the overall picture.I’ve always been a huge advocate for presenting the whole story and I will never diminish the significance of a finding by boosting another. That said, I do understand the perspective of those who place metrics around their findings. Other designers have told me they feel that it allows them to quantify the seriousness of each issue and help their client/designer/boss make decisions about what to do next.We’ve all got our own way of doing things, so I’ll leave it up to you to choose whether or not you score the issues. If you decide to score your findings there are a number of scoring systems you can use and if I had to choose one, I quite like Jakob Nielsen’s methodology for the simple way it takes into consideration multiple factors. Ultimately you should choose the one that suits your working style best.

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Let’s say you did decide to score the issues. Start by writing down each key finding on it’s own post it and move to a clean wall/ window. Leave your affinity diagram where it is. Divide the new wall in half: one side for wins eg findings that indicate things that tested well and the other for issues. You don’t need to score the wins but you do need to acknowledge what went well because knowing what you’re doing well is just as important as knowing where you need to improve. As a group (wow you must be getting sick of each other! Make sure you go out for air from time to time!) score the issues based on your chosen methodology.Once you have completed this entire process you will have everything you need to write a kick ass report.

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What could possibly go wrong? (and how to deal with it)

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No process is perfect and there are a few potential dramas to be aware of:

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People jumping into solution mode too early

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In the middle of the debrief meeting, someone has an epiphany. Shouts of We should move the help button! or We should make the yellow button smaller! ring out and the meeting goes off the rails.I’m not going to point fingers and blame any particular role because we’ve all done it, but it’s important to recognise that’s not why we’re sitting here. The debrief meeting is about digesting and sharing what you and the other observers just saw. Observing and facilitating user testing is a privilege. It’s a precious thing that deserves respect and if you jump into solution mode too soon, you may miss something. Keep the conversation on track by appointing a team member to facilitate the debrief meeting.

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Storage problems

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Handwritten notes taken by multiple observers over several days of testing adds up to an enormous pile of paper. Not only is it a ridiculous waste of paper but they have to be securely stored for three months following the release of the report. It’s not pretty. Typing them up can solve that issue but it comes with it’s own set of storage related hurdles. Just like the handwritten notes, they need to be stored securely. They don’t belong on SharePoint or in the share drive or any other shared storage environment that can be accessed by people outside your observer group. User testing notes are confidential and are not light reading for anyone and everyone no matter how much they complain. Store any typed notes in a limited access storage solution that only the observers have access to and if anyone who shouldn’t be reading them asks, tell them that they are confidential and the integrity of the research must be preserved and respected.

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Time issues

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Before the storage dramas begin, you have to actually pick through the mountain of paper. Not to mention the video footage, and the audio and you have to chase up that sneaky observer who disappeared when the clock struck 5. All of this takes up a lot of time. Another time related issue comes in the form of too much time passing in between testing sessions and debrief meetings. The best way to deal with both of these issues  is to be super organised and hold multiple smaller debriefs in between sessions where possible. As a group, work out your time commitments before testing begins and have a clear plan in place for when you will meet.  This will prevent everything piling up and overwhelming you at the end.

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Disagreements over scoring

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At the end of that long day/week we’re all tired and discussions around scoring the issues can get a little heated. One person’s showstopper may be another person’s mild issue. Many of the ranking systems use words as well as numbers to measure the level of severity and it’s easy to get caught up in the meaning of the words and ultimately get sidetracked from the task at hand. Be proactive and as a group set ground rules upfront for all discussions. Determine how long you’ll spend discussing an issue and what you will do in the event that agreement cannot be reached. People want to feel heard and they want to feel like their contributions are valued. Given that we are talking about an iterative process, sometimes it’s best just to write everything down to keep people happy and merge and cull the list in the next iteration. By then they’ve likely had time to reevaluate their own thinking.

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And finally...

We all have our own ways of making sense of our user testing observations and there really is no right or wrong way to go about it. The one thing I would like to reiterate is the importance of collaboration and teamwork. You cannot do this alone, so please don’t try. If you’re a UX team of one, you probably already have a trusted person that you bounce ideas off. They would be a fantastic person to do this with. How do you approach this process? What sort of challenges have you faced? Let me know in the comments below.

Co-authored by Brandon Dorn, UX designer at Viget.As user experience designers, making sure that websites and tools are usable is a critical component of our work, and conducting user research enables us to assess whether we’re achieving that goal or not. Even if we want to incorporate research, however, certain constraints may stand in our way.

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A few years ago, we realized that we were facing this issue at Viget, a digital design agency, and we decided to make an effort to prioritize user research. Almost two years ago, we shared initial thoughts on our progress in this blog post. We’ve continued to learn and grow as researchers since then and hope that what we’ve learned along the way can help your clients and coworkers understand the value of research and become better practitioners. Below are some of those lessons.

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Make research a priority for your organization

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Before you can do more research, it needs to be prioritized across your entire organization — not just within your design team. To that end, you should:

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• Know what you’re trying to achieve. By defining specific goals, you can share a clear message with the broader organization about what you’re after, how you can achieve those goals, and how you will measure success. At Viget, we shared our research goals with everyone at the company. In addition, we talked to the business development and project management teams in more depth about specific ways that they could help us achieve our goals, since they have the greatest impact on our ability to do more research.

• Track your progress. Once you’ve made research a priority, make sure to review your goals on an ongoing basis to ensure that you’re making progress and share your findings with the organization. Six months after the research group at Viget started working on our goals, we held a retrospective to figure out what was working — and what wasn’t.
• Adjust your approach as needed. You won’t achieve your goals overnight. As you put different tactics into action, adjust your approach if something isn’t helping you achieve your goals. Be willing to experiment and don’t feel bad if a specific tactic isn’t successful.

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Educate your colleagues and clients

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If you want people within your organization to get excited about doing more research, they need to understand what research means. To educate your colleagues and clients, you should:

• Explain the fundamentals of research. If someone has not conducted research before, they may not be familiar or feel comfortable with the vernacular. Provide an overview of the fundamental terminology to establish a basic level of understanding. In a blog post, Speaking the Same Language About Research, we outline how we established a common vocabulary at Viget.
• Help others understand the landscape of research methods. As designers, we feel comfortable talking about different methodologies and forget that that information will be new to many people. Look for opportunities to increase understanding by sharing your knowledge. At Viget, we make this happen in several ways. Internally, we give presentations to the company, organize group viewing sessions for webinars about user research, and lead focused workshops to help people put new skills into practice. Externally, we talk about our services and share knowledge through our blog posts. We are even hosting a webinar about conducting user interviews in November and we'd love for you to join us.
• Incorporate others into the research process. Don't just tell people what research is and why it's important — show them. Look for opportunities to bring more people into the research process. Invite people to observe sessions so they can experience research firsthand or have them take on the role of the notetaker. Another simple way to make people feel involved is to share findings on an ongoing basis rather than providing a report at the end of the process.

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Broaden your perspective while refining your skill set

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Our commitment to testing assumptions led us to challenge ourselves to do research on every project. While we're dogmatic about this goal, we're decidedly un-dogmatic about the form our research takes from one project to another. To pursue this goal, we seek to:

• Expand our understanding. To instill a culture of research at Viget, we've found it necessary to question our assumptions about what research looks like. Books like Erika Hall’s Just Enough Research teach us the range of possible approaches for getting useful user input at any stage of a project, and at any scale. Reflect on any methodological biases that have become well-worn paths in your approach to research. Maybe your organization is meticulous about metrics and quantitative data, and could benefit from a series of qualitative studies. Maybe you have plenty of anecdotal and qualitative evidence about your product that could be better grounded in objective analysis. Aim to establish a balanced perspective on your product through a diverse set of research lenses, filling in gaps as you learn about new approaches.
• Adjust our approach to project constraints. We've found that the only way to consistently incorporate research in our work is to adjust our approach to the context and constraints of any given project. Client expectations, project type, business goals, timelines, budget, and access to participants all influence the type, frequency, and output of our research. Iterative prototype testing of an email editor, for example, looks very different than post-launch qualitative studies for an editorial website. While some projects are research-intensive, short studies can also be worthwhile.
• Reflect on successes and shortcomings. We have a longstanding practice of holding post-project team retrospectives to reflect on and document lessons for future work. Research has naturally come up in these conversations, and many of the things we've discussed you're reading right now. As an agency with a diverse set of clients, it's been important for us to understand what types of research work for what types of clients, and when. Make sure to take time to ask these questions after projects. Mid-project retrospectives can be beneficial, especially on long engagements, yet it's hard to see the forest when you're in the weeds.

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Streamline qualitative research processes 🚄

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Learning to be more efficient at planning, conducting, and analyzing research has helped us overturn the idea that some projects merit research while others don't. Remote moderated usability tests are one of our preferred methods, yet, in our experience, the biggest obstacle to incorporating these tests isn't the actual moderating or analyzing, but the overhead of acquiring and scheduling participants. While some agencies contract out the work of recruiting, we've found it less expensive and more reliable to collaborate with our clients to find the right people for our tests. That said, here are some recommendations for holding efficient qualitative tests:

• Know your tools ahead of time. We use a number of tools to plan, schedule, annotate, and analyze qualitative tests (we're inveterate spreadsheet users). Learn your tools beforehand, especially if you're trying something new. Tools should fade into the background during tests, which Reframer does nicely.
• Establish a recruiting process. When working with clients to find participants, we'll often provide an email template tailored to the project for them to send to existing or potential users of their product. This introductory email will contain a screener that asks a few project-related demographic or usage questions, and provides us with participant email addresses which we use to follow-up with a link to a scheduling tool. Once this process is established, the project manager will ensure that the UX designer on the team has a regular flow of participants. The recruiting process doesn't take care of itself – participants cancel, or reschedule, or sometimes don't respond at all – yet establishing an approach ahead of time allows you, the researcher, to focus on the research in the midst of the project.
• Start recruiting early. Don't wait until you've finished writing a testing script to begin recruiting participants. Once you determine the aim and focal points of your study, recruit accordingly. Scripts can be revised and approved in the meantime.

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Be proactive about making research happen 🤸

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As a generalist design agency, we work with clients whose industries and products vary significantly. While some clients come to us with clear research priorities in mind, others treat it as an afterthought. Rare, however, is the client who is actively opposed to researching their product. More often than not, budget and timelines are the limiting factors. So we try not to make research an ordeal, but instead treat it as part of our normal process even if a client hasn't explicitly asked for it. Common-sense perspectives like Jakob Nielsen’s classic “Discount Usability for the Web” remind us that some research is always better than none, and that some can still be meaningfully pursued. We aren’t pushy about research, of course, but instead try to find a way to make it happen when it isn't a definite priority.

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‍World Usability Day is coming up on November 9, so now is a great time to stop and reflect on how you approach research and to brainstorm ways to improve your process. The tips above reflect some of the lessons we’ve learned at Viget as we’ve tried to improve our own process. We’d love to hear about approaches you’ve used as well.

The word “persona” has many meanings. Sometimes the term refers to a part that an actor plays, other times it can mean a famous person, or even a character in a fictional play or book. But in the field of UX, persona has its own special meaning.

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Before you get started with creating personas of your own, learn what they are and the process to create one. We'll even let you in on a great, little tip — how to use Chalkmark to refine and validate your personas.

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What is a persona?

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In the UX field, a persona is created using research and observations of your users, which is analyzed and then depicted in the form of a person’s profile. This individual is completely fictional, but is created based on the research you’ve conducted into your own users. It’s a form of segmentation, which Angus Jenkinson noted in his article “Beyond Segmentation” is a “better intellectual and practical tool for dealing with the interaction between the concept of the ‘individual’ and the concept of ‘group’”.

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Typical user personas include very specific information in order to paint an in-depth and memorable picture for the people using them (e.g., designers, marketers etc).

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The user personas you create don’t just represent a single individual either; they’ll actually represent a whole group. This allows you to condense your users into just a few segments, while giving you a much smaller set of groups to target.

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There are many benefits of using personas. Here are just a few:

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• You can understand your clients better by seeing their pain points, what they want, and what they need
 
• You can narrow your focus to a small number of groups that matter, rather than trying to design for everybody
 
• They’re useful for other teams too, from product management to design and marketing
 
• They can help you clarify your business or brand
 
• They can help you create a language for your brand
 
• You can market your products in a better, more targeted way

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How do I create a persona?

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There’s no right or wrong way to create a persona; the way you make them can depend on many things, such as your own internal resources, and the type of persona you want.

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The average persona that you’ve probably seen before in textbooks, online or in templates isn’t always the best kind to use (picture the common and overused types like ‘Busy Barry’). In fact, the way user personas are constructed is a highly debated topic in the UX industry.

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Creating good user personas

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Good user personas are meaningful descriptions — not just a list of demographics and a fake name that allows researchers to simply make assumptions.

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Indi Young, an independent consultant and founder of Adaptive Path, is an advocate of creating personas that aren’t just a list of demographics. In an article she penned on medium.com, Indi states: “To actually bring a description to life, to actually develop empathy, you need the deeper, underlying reasoning behind the preferences and statements-of-fact. You need the reasoning, reactions, and guiding principles.”

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One issue that can stem from traditional types of personas is they can be based on stereotypes, or even reinforce them. Things like gender, age, ethnicity, culture, and location can all play a part in doing this.

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In a study by Phil Turner and Susan Turner titled “Is stereotyping inevitable when designing with personas?” the authors noted: “Stereotyped user representations appear to constrain both design and use in many aspects of everyday life, and those who advocate universal design recognise that stereotyping is an obstacle to achieving design for all.”

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So it makes sense to scrap the stereotypes and, in many instances, irrelevant demographic data. Instead, include information that accurately describes the persona’s struggles, goals, thoughts and feelings — all bits of meaningful data.

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Creating user personas involves a lot of research and analyzing. Here are a few tips to get you started:

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1) Do your research

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When you’re creating personas for UX, it’s absolutely crucial you start with research; after all, you can’t just pull this information out of thin air by making assumptions! Ensure you use a mixture of both qualitative and quantitative research here in order to cast your net wide and get results that are really valuable. A great research method that falls into the realms of both qualitative and quantitative is user interviews.

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When you conduct your interviews, drill down into the types of behaviors, attitudes and goals your users have. It’s also important to mention that you can’t just examine what your users are saying to you — you need to tap into what they’re thinking and how they behave too.

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2) Analyze and organize your data into segments

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Once you’ve conducted your research, it’s time to analyze it. Look for trends in your results — can you see any similarities among your participants? Can you begin to group some of your participants together based on shared goals, attitudes and behaviors?

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After you have sorted your participants into groups, you can create your segments. These segments will become your draft personas. Try to limit the number of personas you create. Having too many can defeat the purpose of creating them in the first place.

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Don’t forget the little things! Give your personas a memorable title or name and maybe even assign an image or photo — it all helps to create a “real” person that your team can focus on and remember.

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3) Review and test

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After you’ve finalized your personas, it’s time to review them. Take another look at the responses you received from your initial user interviews and see if they match the personas you created. It’s also important you spend some time reviewing your finalized personas to see if any of them are too similar or overlap with one another. If they do, you might want to jump back a step and segment your data again.

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This is also a great time to test your personas. Conduct another set of user interviews and research to validate your personas.

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User persona templates and examples

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Creating your personas using data from your user interviews can be a fun task — but make sure you don’t go too crazy. Your personas need to be relevant, not overly complex and a true representation of your users.

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A great way to ensure your personas don’t get too out of hand is to use a template. There are many of these available online in a number of different formats and of varying quality.

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This example from UX Lady contains a number of helpful bits of information you should include, such as user experience goals, tech expertise and the types of devices used. The accompany article also provides a fair bit of guidance on how to fill in your templates too. While this template is good, skip the demographics portion and read Indi Young’s article and books for better quality persona creation.

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Using Chalkmark to refine personas

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Now it’s time to let you in on a little tip. Did you know Chalkmark can be used to refine and validate your personas?

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One of the trickiest parts of creating personas is actually figuring out which ones are a true representation of your users — so this usually means lots of testing and refining to ensure you’re on the right track. Fortunately, Chalkmark makes the refinement and validation part pretty easy.

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First, you need to have your personas finalized or at least drafted. Take your results from your persona software or template you filled in. Create a survey for each segment so that you can see if your participants’ perceptions of themselves matches each of your personas.

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Second, create your test. This is a pretty simple demo we made when we were testing our own personas a few years ago at Optimal Workshop. Keep in mind this was a while ago and not a true representation of our current personas — they’ve definitely changed over time! During this step, it’s also quite helpful to include some post-test questions to drill down into your participants’ profiles.

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After that, send these tests out to your identified segments (e.g., if you had a retail clothing store, some of your segments might be women of a certain age, and men of a certain age. Each segment would receive its own test). Our test involved three segments: “the aware”, “the informed”, and “the experienced” — again, this has changed over time and you’ll find your personas will change too.

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Finally, analyze the results. If you created separate tests for each segment, you will now have filtered data for each segment. This is the real meaty information you use to validate each persona. For example, our three persona tests all contained the questions: “What’s your experience with user research?” And “How much of your job description relates directly to user experience work?”

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bove, you’ll see the results for Persona #2. This tells us that 34% of respondents identified that their job involves a lot of UX work (75-100%, in fact). In addition, 31% of this segment considered themselves “Confident” with remote user research, while a further 9% and 6% of this segment said they were “Experienced” and “Expert”.

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These results all aligned with the persona we associated with that segment: “the informed”.

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When you’re running your own tests, you’ll analyze the data in a very similar way. If the results from each of your segments’ Chalkmark tests don’t match up with the personas you created, it’s likely you need to adjust your personas. However, if each segment’s results happen to match up with your personas (like our example above), consider them validated!

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For a bit more info on our very own Chalkmark persona test, check out this article.

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Further reading

   
• "From personas to user stories" - an article by Roman Pichler on how to discover the right stories and integrate them into a sprint.
   
• "Personas make users memorable for product team members" - Aurora Bedford looks at how personas support user-centered design throughout a project’s lifecycle.
   
• "Developing successful personas" - Luke Wroblewski presents notes from a talk by Tamara Adlin who outlines a set of practical ways to align stakeholder, developers, and designers to use personas.
   
• "Describing personas" - Indi Young looks at some of the problems in accurately describing personas.