This project is confidential, so I can only share a broad overview here. Please don't hesitate to connect, and I'd be happy to discuss the design process in greater depth
Overview
Objective
Understand the healthcare & entertainment market and their workflows. To understand how we fit into those workflows. To find ways to improve hard- and software.
Role
UX researcher. Setting up the user research, organising research trips to users in London and Paris, analysing the results, sharing them within the organisation.
Methods
Contextual inquiry (on location), (additional) online user interviews, affinity mapping
Tools
Figma, Teams, sketchbook/notebook, Dovetail
01
How
Arrange interviews
I gathered the contact information of a diverse group of users through fostering relations with the sales department. The sales department is your best friend in this phase as they would love to have a deeper insight in their customers and already have a good overview of which types of users there are and how to approach them. Because we operate in multiple markets and have different kinds of users, we wanted to have a selection of key users in different industries. In this research we performed around 25 qualitative studies. The sales department's referral helps a lot to get your foot in the door.
02
Organise trips
Most visits were planned over email. I planned two visits per day, and didn't plan any on the day of traveling there. I arranged the budget by writing a proposal for the CFO, emphasising the value of research for strategic decision-making. Some users didn't respond right away, so two weeks before the trip I sent out reminders. This helped to fill up our agenda before the trip. I also exchanged phone numbers with the users, in case there were some last-minute changes to the schedule. Some of the users who were not available for a visit, were willing to do a video call instead. I brought an engineer with me on the trip, to make sure the user needs would be understood by the engineering team as well. This later helped in the communication between our UX team and the engineers.
03
Collect & analyse data
All the interviews and observations were collected in our user research repository. Here the data was tagged, so the highlights could be categorised on an affinity map. The categorised highlights were then combined into clear insights that could be shared within the company. We like to call those "research snacks".
04
Share insights
The key insights were shared with stakeholders within the company, notably Product Management, the UX design team and engineers. These insights informed decisions on the design, strategic and technological level.
Hackathon
From insights to prototypes in one day
Insights from these user research trips served as a basis for a hackathon I organised with the design team. In this hackathon each team took a user need from the user research repository and had one day to come up with a tangible prototype to help solve this need. This led to some interesting new concepts, and also to some improvements that could be directly implemented into the new UI designs.
Results
Reflection
This was an amazing project in which I learned a lot. Key learnings include:
🧑🏼💼 Salespeople can help a lot with finding a diverse group of interesting users. They can also serve as a reference when contacting users. This greatly improves the rate at which they respond.
⏱️ It works well to plan spare time before and after your interview. Some of the best insights emerge during the small talk after an interview or during a tour of the location.
💡 Colleagues really enjoy hearing about the users and see the value in these insights, especially if the insights are specific and actionable.
☕️ At the end of the trip, sit down for a cup of coffee and discuss the key insights you had during the trip. This list can serve as a template for your first presentation to product management right after the trip.
🍿 Spreading some 'research snacks' on posters around the office after the trip gets people talking.