⚡ User Research - a Simple Guideline

The common mistake which we make during research is we start by asking direct questions from the user for eg. “Hey, what did you like or dislike about this product”, problems with this is that direct questions require that we recall facts without context, This process is prone to cognitive bias.

Some Psychology behind it:

1. Human behaviour is to give answers that are influenced more by their sense of identity rather than their actual behaviour
   1. Humans tend to come up with coherent reasons to explain their behaviour that are often not grounded in reality
   2. This is just how our brain works
2. A remarkable aspect of your mental life is that your brain is rarely baffled
   1. Your brain will always give you answer, the answer might not be grounded in reality though
   2. Confidence isn’t a good indicator of truth or reality, it’s a feeling which reflects coherence of information and the cognitive ease of processing it, not necessarily the truth

So as Product Managers, Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page - understand the customer’s actual behaviour - their reality and not the story they tell themselves.

Preparing for User Research:

First we should start with distinguishing between Research & Interview Questions

Primary research question in every research should always be : “What needs, pain points and desires matter most to this customer?”

Once we have explored opportunities that matter most to the customer, we can dive into specifics of any of those opportunities.

Let the participant set the direction of the interview,

What matters most to the customer trumps what we need to learn

Conducting the Users Research:

Best way about to learn about the users can be the below approach:

1. Ask them to share specific stories about their experience
2. Memories about recent instances are more reliable than our generalizations about our own behaviour or our answers to direct questions
   1. eg, Tell me about the last time you were entertained, Tell me about the last time you purchased a jeans
3. Excavate the story, nudge them to share as many details as possible, every story has a beginning, middle and end - use customer experience map to help track the story.
   1. Start at the beginning, What happened first?
   2. Where were you? Set the scene for me?
   3. What happened next?
   4. What happened before that?
   5. What challenges did you encounter?
   6. How did you encounter the challenge?
   7. Did anyone help you?
   8. If users respond with “I usually or In general”, then you would need to gently guide them back to telling you about the specific instance. eg. “In this specific example, did you face the challenge”
4. When participants jump to generalization: “I always face this challenge” - it’s going to feel that this is the conclusion, but remember the research on how poorly we perform at answering the direct questions and how susceptible our response is to cognitive bias.

“Golden rule about the research is let participants talk about what they care about most!”

You can steer the conversation in two ways:

1. Decide which type of story to collect:
   1. Open Question: Tell me about the last time you watched streaming entertainment
   2. Specific Story: Tell me about the last time you watched streaming entertainment on mobile device
2. Use your story prompts to dig deeper into different parts of the story - which can be guided by your research questions

It’s okay if sometimes a user interview is not giving us insights or user is not going in direction we want them to share about, it’s okay what’s important is to respect and understand what users care about most. With continuous interviewing, we are going to interview the next user soon enough so a disappointing interview won’t be painful.

Closing your Research Insights:

Synthesis as you go, so that it doesn’t become an additional task you need to take up. I have tried the below approach of “Interview Snapshot” suggested by Teresa Torres in her book “Continuous Discovery”.

Interview Snapshot: One pager designed to help you synthesize what you learned.

(Don’t rely on your memory to keep your research straight)

1. Name & Photo - helps in unlocking memory of the interview
2. A memorable quote - helps in unlocking memory of the interview
3. Quick facts (to be able to identify similar users together)
4. Insights - points which don’t seem like opportunity right now, but looks like a unique behaviour
5. Opportunities - need, pain point, desire (not solutions)
   1. In case user requested a specific feature, ask them about why they need it?
   2. Frame it using your customer’s words: to ensure we are capturing opportunity from user’s perspective
6. Experience map that captures each participants unique story: Draw the nodes and links that make up the story