Stickynotes episode 22, Nov 19 2020
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Details from this session
There’s always pressure to deliver user research faster, so how do you balance this with accuracy?
Back in the day, it wasn’t unusual for a usability test to take 2 weeks, followed by 2 weeks of analysis and report writing. These days, a one month turn-around would be unheard of – the team may have created several incremental releases by then!
So, how have we adapted to faster delivery times? What’s changed, and what’s the trade-off?
This week, Chris was on his own but thanks to some great audience questions we still managed to hit 40 minutes of content!
Some highlights of what we discussed:
- Using revolving door studies to ensure there are always user research studies planned, even before you know what you’ll be testing. Recruiting participants based on your personas lets you set the sessions up without knowing the session content.
- Using this incremental approach to run many cheap, fast studies that build reliability (larger “n”, etc.) over time.
- Getting the team involved in deciding what tasks to run and what questions to ask so that they have an investment in the outcome.
- Getting the team to act as data loggers and note takers, either using tally sheets or printouts of the interface for them to put stickynotes on when they see issues with certain elements. This again makes them invested in the sessions, and ensures they pay full attention.
- Using a meeting with the team immediately after the sessions finish as the primary “results” meeting. Following up with a written report more for archival purposes.
- Entering bugs into the teams tracker after talking them through with team members. Bug databases aren’t for usability findings, they are for issues that the team agrees are bugs and intends to fix.
Find out more about each of these topics by watching the replay of the session!
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