Workflow
Review Job Overview
Before beginning, fully review the job overview of the position. It will have all the information you need about what is expected and what tools you will need.
pageUser ResearcherIntroduction Call
There are is one introductory workshop to be attended. It is important that designers attend in order to get familiar with the client and their product, as well as what they are looking for from the project.
Prepare the Miro board
To make the deep work for the user researcher easier, they need this board populated with tester names (top row), sections of the app (turquoise row left) and sprint questions (bottom three yellow rows). More details can be found on this Loom.
Introduce an upfront user testing session
If you are working on a branding project, you will need to do some user testing in advance. After the two branding workshops have been completed, run a user testing session with potential users to test the values defined in the workshops, as well as the UVP.
Attend Review Workshop 1
If you are working on a branding project, you will need to attend the first section of the first Review Workshop. During this portion of the Review Workshop, you will have the opportunity for a 15 minute presentation of your upfront user testing session.
Write Interview Guide
First find out what it is we want to learn during the user test, from the designers and sprint facilitators.
Examples of real interview guides from previous projects:
Run Later Interview
Take over the responsibility of running a user interview from the Expert after witnessing some for yourself. For a detailed guide into interviews, refer to:
pageQuestions and FormalitiesRun at least 3 Interviews
Running 3 interviews, irrespective of their order or whether one of them is the first interview. Please refer to UR6 for details and examples.
Additional information on Interviews
Run First Interview
Don't worry, the first time you talk to people is always unusual and a bit more challenging. Especially showing strangers something new and expecting their feedback could make everyone nervous. But that's not a problem - be honest, be nice, there will be results either way and you will have another 4 interviews. For interviewing guidelines, refer to:
pageQuestions and FormalitiesTake Good Notes
Taking notes during a user session is important for the researcher to refer back to later. You can take notes in a plain google doc. It doesn’t need to be neat or fancy. The objective is to capture as accurately as possible what happened in the session. Good note-taking is:
Verbatim of what the user says and does (important)
Try not to let your own thoughts and biases decide for you what to note down and what to leave out. (important)
Include observations or insights if you find them (less important). If you do have personal thoughts/insight to log, make sure it is clear to the researcher/note-reader which are your ideas, and which are raw notes from the session.
Use different colours to distinguish the type of feedback visually. This will help later to work through what's really important.
Tidy up notes
Tidying up the user interview notes helps the interviewer do their job faster. It's basically about arranging them by colours to make them more skimmable. Watch this Loom for more info.
Answer Long Term Goal
The Long Term Goal is the key statement decided on during the workshops, which guides the team through the design process. It's a short sentence capturing the vision of the project under optimal circumstances, which you can find on the Miro board for the sprint.
After the notes were arranged by colour or the user feedback clearly written out, you can give a more or less confident prediction, whether the product design is currently in the right direction towards the long term goal. Below are a few examples.
When writing the user research report, you can write a paragraph about whether the user's reactions matched with the expected long-term goal and if not, suggest re-designs to move closer to it.
pageLong Term GoalAnswer Sprint Questions
pageSprint QuestionsSummarise Detailed Feedback
Writing out the detailed feedback involves very succinct writing skills and diplomatic use of language.
pageFeedbackAnalysis
Gathered data analysis is an essential process of user research. Here is the moment where your knowledge of psychology and human behaviour will come into play to be able to make sense of all the data points gathered from the interviews.
By clustering similar feedback you will be able to recognise patterns of current behaviours and perceptions of users and organize those into consistent signals.
It will make it easier to relate those signals to the client's research questions (or goals) and certain design decisions which will make recommendations for the next iteration more obvious.
Overall it will streamline your process of report writing - after the analysis step, you will have clear insights which could be used in the report.
Good analysis examples: Integral ZigZag Unlock protocol
Write Analysis Report & Recommendations
Recommendations serve two purposes:
Provide the client with strategic design advice. After listening to your presentation they should feel equipped with enough knowledge to make well-informed decisions regarding product strategy.
Give our internal Product Designer and Copywriter feedback on Quick Fixes. These should be shared with the designer after the user research sessions, early enough so they can fix them before the final presentation.
More on Recommendations:
pageRecommendationsMore on Quick Fixes:
pageQuick FixesCreate a presentation file
The presentation file will be used during the final presentation. It should look nice, have screenshots of the product at the related parts of the user research. You can use the following file and make a copy of it. Ask your Expert for access to pitch.com so you can edit it.
Please follow the slides of the template precisely and use the format to fill in the content. It should look nice and professional.
On some slides, you will have to create screenshots of the product in Figma, so they visually blend into the style of the presentation.
Here's how to do it:
Open the project prototype in Figma and select the screen you are referring to on your slides by clicking the title of it. Export it as a PNG.
Next, open this Figma file and drop the PNG you just exported inside.
Select Effects and add a Drop Shadow with the color FF0088 and X and Y at 16. Blur and Spread should be 0. Then export the PNG again and you're done.
Present results
The presentation can either be during a single Hypersprint as a conclusion or alternatively as an iteration workshop. Here is a detailed overview of the process:
pagePresentationLast updated
