Why is it important to engage people in user research?

Why is it important to engage people in user research?Roman Schoeneboom

“We are customer-centric.”

95%Bain & Company survey

© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

“We provide great customer experience.”

80%Bain & Company survey


“I have experienced great customer experience.”

11%Forrester 14


Why is it important to engage people in user research?Empathy should play a key role in the problem-solving process.

It unlocks capacity for innovation by allowing deep emotional understanding.

But it’s crucial how to present insight.


“I was

inspired by a100 page

report.”

Said no one ever.© Roman Schoeneboom, London 2016.

We can’t use insight which only lives inside the researcher’s head.

Insight insidedoes not help anyone


We are not just here to do‘some research’.

We are here to design better services for real people.


UI/UX leads

Communication manager

UI/UX designers

Head of designStrategic principal Programmemanager

Content strategist Service design manager

Analytics manager

Digital Design Language team

Developers Senior service designer

Justin says:“Tesco is good at urgent,not so good at important.”

Service Design team

James says:“It should always feel that we are fighting the system. This shows that we are doing things differently.”

We are One TescoA service design-led transformation programme aimed at placing the customer at the heart of the design process.We’re like a well drilled kitchen.


One Tesco works onImproving the shopping experience and retail environment for our customers, by understanding their needs and designing services around those needs.

Principles, guidelines and workflows for ourself and for other teams.

A Digital Design Language providing a consistent visual system and assets to share and reuse.

Working and publishing mobile app standards.

Conducting deep ethnography research among our elderly shoppers to uncover unmet customer needs (Discovery phase).


It is critical that your entire team engages with user research.

1. Tell stories, be visual, share

2. Research as a team sport

3. Collaborate for the best results

So how do you move research from something the researcher does to being an activity the whole team owns?


1. Tell stories, be visual, shareWith ethnographic research you very quickly end up gathering vast mountains of data.

At One Tesco the single most important job you have as researcher is getting the research into the heads of your team.

If you are feeling swamped by assets, just remind yourself that this is a worthwhile investment.


Research objectives

Research dashboard

Discovery

This week

Next week

Monday

Monday

Tuesday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Thursday

Friday

Friday

Customers spoken with

Staff spoken with

Days since last visit

Number of team members

People spider web

Name

10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

0

-1

-2

-3

-4

-5

-6

-7

-8

-9

-10

What we’ve learned so far

Main insightor theme

Supporting customer quote

Supporting observations

Shopper type

What to design for them?

Main retailer

People we met

Name and age

Shoppingtime

Shoppingtime

Shoppingtime

Techskill

Techskill

Techskill

Name and age Name and age

Research profile (filled out)

Photos Photos Photos



Things we learned about each person

In-storeshops

Online shops

Total shops

Average shopping time

Where we did our research

Inspired by the GDS and seen as vertical campfi res – places where teams can gather round, connect and share insight.

Our research wall templates enable us to update with A4 print outs and post its – so we can use the same templates while constantly cycling diff erent assets

Research wall


ObjectivesStatisticsCalendar

People we met

People spider web

ThemesQuotesConcepts

Research wall


Avoid the big reveal, update regularly

Do regular research playbacks with the team – telling the stories of the individuals we met.

Get a regular rhythm and invite people from other bits of the business.

Make sure you have time to present back. Allow time for ideas to percolate.

The problems started after the reveal


Visualizing things early helps you to see patterns as they emerge

With a spider web you can rank your customers on important factors such as health and mobility and familiarity with technology.

It helps to see who your extreme customers are.

It helps to re-think recruitment plan for the next phase of research.

Derek


What worked for us

Have a great system in place for uploading assets after each interview.

Make sure everyone on your research team knows and follow this, be prepared to adjust as you go, iterate.

Creating presentations should be quick and easy – everything is labeled in the right way and easily retrievable when you need it.

Factor in sufficient time for the uploading of assets.

Be prepared to adjust the plan when you are struggling.

Remember that sharing insights and making them easy for your team to absorb is the single most important thing for you to do.


2. Research as a team sportBut more importantly than just presenting back the ideas is actually taking your team to the coal face.

To discover real but unexpressed and unmet customer needs, you need to go where the people are.

To embrace their world you have to be in their worldThis is essential part of building empathy and there is no substitute for it.

There is plenty of evidence that increasing “exposure hours” of your team results in the design of better products, but you need to invest in your team.


What worked for us

We ran training sessions with our team before we took them out into the fi eld.

Field guides covering practicalities like where to meet up, what to do with assets .

Stickers to reward team members who had been out on sessions.

Using research wall as a vehicle to show the rest of the business best practice.

The littleresearch guide


The challenges

Motivating your team – everyone has a day job – it helps to have a metric and for this to be enforced by the senior members of your team.

For example – it should never have been longer than two weeks since a member of the team has been in front of a customer.

Don’t assume that a stakeholder knows how to behave on research.


What worked

It was helpful to us to explain that interviews unfold like the chapters of a book and interrupting an interview can disrupt the interviewer’s flow.

We gave plenty of space to ask questions, and carefully signalled these.

Swapped numbers before each session and arranged a place to meet up before the session for a pre-brief.

Used the pre-brief to go over the participant profile, paperwork, re-affirm the rules of the interview.


How many times have you had to deal with a senior stakeholder saying “but you’ve only spoken to seven users, how can you make assumptions about the needs of all our customers?”

And sure, you can have that debate about the merits of small data versus big data, how it helps us explain the why behind the what.

But what about also facing into it?

In our experience the best results come when you collaborate more widely within the research community.

3. Collaborate for the best results


The right research makes the difference

Market research Insight research

Market research answers questions of what.

Insight research answers WHY, HOW and WHAT IF,

and is actionable for design.

asks 100 people

creates 10 truths

asks 10 people

creates 100 truths


Work with the big data

We have a dedicated data analyst to help us.

As we see themes emerging, he is then able to see how representative our fi ndings are.

He is also able to see what the cost implications are and what the size of the opportunity are if we fi x it.

This is invaluable when having conversations with senior stakeholders who are – let’s face it – interested in the bottom line and trying to fi gure out where best to spend money in order to get the biggest results.


Team up with academic researchers and charities

Academic research has a very different approach, which can bring a lot to your project. That’s why we are collaborating:

Doing all this means we have really explored the full landscape and it adds gravitas and weight to our own research study, meaning senior stakeholders are more likely to engage with the results.

Longitudinal data that looks at societal trends across the whole of the UK and over longer time period.

Offers great subject matter expertise and a huge network, which helps for recruitment.

If a retailer can design well for people living with dementia, it will be well designed for everyone else.


If the plan adds up, we are moving from

monolithic system

large, inflexible, slow to change

user-focused system

agile, modular, reliable, responsible


Take aways

01 Empathy is key: it unlocks capacity for innovation.02 It is vital how you present the insight.03 Insights in the researcher’s head are not valuable for the business.04 Your single most important job is to get the research in your team’s heads.05 It is critical that the entire team engages with user research.06 Tell stories, be visual, share.07 Avoid the big reveal, share reguarly.

. Do regular feeback sessions.

. Get regular rhythm and invite people from other areas of the business.

. Give time for ideas to percolate.08 Visualise early to see emerging patterns.09 Have a great system in place, factor in suffi cient time for the vast amount of data.10 Research as a team sport.

. More team ‘exposure hours’ will result in designing better products

. Run training sessions, provide fi eld guides, create stickers as reward

. Use tools to train and share best practice with business

. Involve senior members in research11 Collaborate with research community.12 Do the right type of research. Do insight research.13 Work wih big data to see cost implications and what opportunities there are.14 Team up with academic researchers and charities to get a diff erent POV.


Thank you

Sources:Presentation content is based on the blog post ‘Why is it important to engage people in user research’ by Kate Kapp, London 2016Presentation content has been proofread by Kenneth Yau.Page 02-04: idea taken from ‘Hellon_05052016_for Tesco 5-5-16’, © Hellon 2016Page 07: Image taken from www.effectiveui.comPage 09: Icon set ‘Tesco Transformation team’ by Carl Holderness, Noun Project 2016Page 15: Image taken from www.londontheatredirect.comPage 18: Image taken from www.fullhdpictures.comPage 22: Image taken from www.social.eyeforpharma.comPage 23: Idea taken from ‘Hellon_05052016_for Tesco 5-5-16’, © Hellon 2016Page 24: Image taken from www.word.jobstheword.co.ukPage 08, 12, 18, 20, 27: Images taken from www.pexels.com

Roman SchoeneboomSenior Service Designer

[email protected]: +44 (0) 20 3681 4325 | Extension: 367325

Tesco PLC, Digital ProductThird Floor | Lever Building | 85 Clerkenwell Road | London | EC1R 5AR

Why is it important to engage people in user research?

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