Achieving Stakeholder Buy-in for
User Research
Samantha LeVan

About Me
• Performing user research for five years.
• Experience in communications and design.
• Masters in HCI from Carnegie Mellon.
Currently Sr. User Experience
Analyst with SUPERVALU, Inc. and
owner of Tigerfork Consulting.

A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest or
an impact on a project.
www.flickr.com/photos/mattfoster/736444278/

Ready for research?
Do it yourself.

Introduce user research slowly.
In the beginning, your colleagues can play user.

Find an executive advocate.
Who’s going to pay for this?
www.flickr.com/photos/tracy_olson/61056391/

Look for relevant examples.
User research can be found outside Google.

Establish ROI quickly.
• Customer support calls
• Task time
• Level of satisfaction
• Clicks and page loads
• Task completion
www.flickr.com/photos/31796655@N07/2974942783/

Let stakeholders observe your test sessions.
Create video clips of the highlights of customers
using the products.
Let them see the raw data.

Research can be done by anyone.
CogTool
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bej/cogtool/
Quick and Dirty Testing
http://www.uie.com/articles/usabilitytesting_dc/
Competitive Analysis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitor_analysis
Heuristic Analysis
http://www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html

Understand the vision.
Mood boards are a great way to communicate a
product vision.

www.flickr.com/photos/matsandre/2810021852/
www.flickr.com/photos/misocrazy/412453739/
www.flickr.com/photos/darkpatator/2218410579/

Stakeholders are part of a team.

Build a relationship with your stakeholders.
Create a comfort zone before communicating
your ideas.

What not to do when presenting an idea.

Failing to make the pitch.
• Not addressing stakeholder concerns
• Forgetting to include the “why”
• Lack of confidence
• Unfamiliarity with major stakeholders
• Not understanding company vision

Learn a new language
• Marketing
• Executives
• Engineers
• Product Management
• QA
• Project Managers
• Designers

You want me to do what?
www.flickr.com/photos/striatic/2192192956/

Resolution attempt #1:
Pleading
FAIL
Begging doesn’t sell your idea.

Resolution attempt #2:
Personas and Scenarios
FAIL
Personas need to be established and accepted.

Resolution attempt #3:
Present the challenge
SUCCESS
I’ve got a problem for you to solve.

When personas work.
Working with a marketing team?
Are there established market segments?
Create simple personas.

Competitive Peter Learns to Play UNO
Competitive Peter is a husband and father
of two boys. He works long hours at his
sales job but always makes time on Friday
night to play games with his family.
Competitive in nature, Peter likes to be
the winner and looks for games that have
an element of challenge but are also fun
for the whole family.
Scenario
Competitive Peter picked up UNO on his
way home from the office. After dinner,
he pulls out the game and challenges his
family to a couple of rounds but first he
must figure out how to play the game.

Let the stakeholders find the problem.
People are more inclined to resolve an issue that is
personal to them.

You are the expert of your idea.

Not everyone speaks the same language.
If your stakeholder doesn’t understand color
theory, don’t be surprised to hear…
“Can you make it blue instead?”

Company vision
We strive for average.
Not likely.

Don’t expect perfection.
It’s not perfect but it’s perfect enough.

Don’t be afraid to let people say “I would like
using that.”

Limit presentation meeting size to six people.
Schedule several small sessions.
Lower the chance of getting off track.

Remote presentations are challenging.
Pause every 1-2 slides and ask for feedback.
Elicit feedback and call on people who are quiet.

People get off track. It happens.
Try to figure out what’s really the problem
outside of the meeting. Solve it individually.
www.flickr.com/photos/tostie14/93871481/

Start in school.
Use projects and reports as a chance to practice
your pitch.

Resources
Communicating Design by Dan Brown
www.communicatingdesign.com
Contextual Design by Beyer and Holtzblatt
books.google.com/books?id=sVKuMvaFzjQC
Usability Inspection Methods by Nielsen and Mack
www.useit.com/jakob/inspectbook.html
Samantha LeVan
Twitter: tigerfork
Blog: www.perfecttuna.com
Email: tigerfork@gmail.com