Basic UX Research Tips and Tricks Part 2

This is the second part of Basic UX Research Tips and Tricks. But hey, you can read them out of order if you want, doesn’t matter.

5. Be comfortable not completing all your tasks/questions (it’s not worth rushing)

It can be difficult to predict how much a participant will say. What happens if you’re about to run out of time, but you haven’t finished your entire study yet? Relax. You have to be comfortable not completing all your tasks and questions. It happens to everyone. The most important thing is that you conduct a quality study in the remaining minutes you have left. If you begin to rush, your participant will not feel encouraged to provide quality feedback. If you show you are stressed out, your participant might begin to feel your stress which can negatively impact those precious last minutes you have with them. What can you do next?

Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

• If you can, book a follow-up session with the same participant.
• Make use of the information you do have from the study.
• Realize that your study may have been too long for that participant. Maybe it’s worth shortening for future participants!
• If you haven’t been able to gather what you need, consider disqualifying that session.

6. Know how to share quick findings so that people will read them.

This one is important for increasing the visibility of research within your team/organization and for providing transparency into your research process. Whenever I complete a study, I have found that it is beneficial to share some quick findings with my team. This can be done even before you have completed your analysis, as long as the findings you share can stand alone as valid results (and not massive assumptions just after quickly skimming some interviews). I like to share around 5 useful findings to the team in an email or simple slide deck with an eye-catching subject line. Sharing quick findings the same day, or a few days after conducting research helps to refute the myth that all research takes ages to deliver in useful results. It also welcomes stakeholders and other team members into the research process and encourages them to engage with the content, ask questions, and anticipate a full report/set of findings.

If the research you are conducting is not ideal for a pre-report share, instead, consider sending out a quick email to inform stakeholders and your team that the research went well (or that you encountered some challenges!) and when you expect to have your findings available. You can also share one or two nuggets of information such as something you observed during the session/observation, or something you learnt about the environment/industry from during your study. Maybe you learnt something interesting from someone you met during your research that you can share with the team.

7. Don’t waste your time on word-for-word transcription

This is an opinion statement with which you may disagree. For the most part, I do not suggest transcribing UX research interviews/sessions as the effort required is not worth the result. Why do I say this? For every hour of audio you collect, it will take you approximately 4 hours to transcribe. That’s a 4:1 ratio. I would prefer to spend at least 3 of those 4 hours demonstrating my value as a researcher in other ways. I have also never reviewed a transcription in its entirety.

Here’s how you can collect valuable information from recorded sessions without transcribing them word-for-word:

• Listen to your sessions, and write down what is being discussed in point-form, skipping the parts that definitely have zero value (small talk, going off-topic, etc.). Write down the time of each idea discussed so that you can review the recording later, if needed. Include your own research thoughts in your notes, this is part of your analysis process after all. You can separate your own thoughts from the session notes using colour or symbols.
• Have your team/stakeholders review the sessions with you. Each person (including yourself) can use sticky notes, or a digital document to write down observations and talking points that stand out to them (include the recording time!). As a group, you can review what everyone has written and share thoughts on each point that is brought up. It’s always interesting to discover what someone else writes down as important compared to yourself. Now, you have a nice collection of session notes that you can group into themes. You can always review the recording if you need further refreshing at any point.
• For both methods, feel free to pause the recording and rewind if you want to capture a great quote word-for-word.

There are, of course, exceptions to this suggestion. If you are working with a sensitive topic or participant group, you may need to transcribe for legal or ethical reasons. In these cases, having a word-for-word transcription is necessary to avoid any misconceptions or misunderstandings that your paraphrasing might cause.

8. Only ask one question at a time.

This one is simple, but powerful. Avoid double-barreled questions. That is, questions that ask two questions in one. Examples: What is your least and most favourite part of this product? When was the last time you used this product and how was your experience? You are now asking two things in one question. By asking the respondent to answer two questions in one, they aren’t being given the opportunity to think of each in isolation. Therefore, the two may influence each other in the respondent’s answer. Perhaps the respondent will only answer one of the two questions. Perhaps the question will confuse the respondent and they will end up answering neither of your questions.

When it comes to analyzing your results, it is far easier to compare answers to questions that are focused on capturing or measuring one idea. So ask one question at a time.

Do you have any UXR tips that you’d share with those who are starting out?