The document emphasizes the importance of customer research in product development, highlighting that insights about user behavior cannot be accurately captured from behind a desk. It outlines the process of contextual inquiry, including establishing rapport with participants, observing their work, and collecting artifacts to gain a rich understanding of their experiences. Additionally, it discusses the analysis of research data using affinity diagrams to identify themes and trends.

1. Will Evans @semanticwill Yana Kuchirko @mslogophiliac

2. 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko “ Insight about customer behavior and work patterns were never discovered sitting at your fucking desk.”

3. Why Customer Research 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

4. 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko The tendency, especially in design and product development processes, to believe everyone uses digital technologies exactly like you do. Andres Glusman

5. “ Customers are terrible at articulating what they do. When asked what they do, people give their impression of what they do—which is usually horseshit” 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

6. AgileUX Customer Research Specific Context: Specific Users: Specific Goals: 01/29/12

7. Types of AgileUX Customer Research 01/29/12

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9. 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

10. What is contextual inquiry? 01/29/12 ~ Beyer & Holtzblatt Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

11. 01/29/12 Every ideation and design cycle should start with a contextual inquiry into the full experience of a customer and his/her. In AgilexUX, a regular cadence of lightweight research constantly cycled back into the scrum team allows for rapid validation of ideas. Contextual inquiry clarifies and focuses the problems a customer is experiencing by discovering the Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

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13. Get to know your user Before starting contextual inquiry process, you should establish rapport with your user since you’ll have to watch him/her working as “naturally” as possible Establishing expectations of roles is crucial to gathering rich, unbiased data. Inquiry process should be driven by the participant’s work rather than interviewer’s questions 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

14. Customer-Researcher Relationship Types 01/29/12 Master/apprentice The customer is a master from whom you will be learning the trade Partnership Interviewer partners with customer to extract details of his/her work Interviewer/interviewee Interviewee responds to specific questions asked by the interviewer (entails hierarchy) Expert/novice Customer is an expert in his domain, and shares this experience with the researcher/novice (entails hierarchy) Guest Researcher’s comfort is the central focus of the inquiry (entails hierarchy) Suggested roles Roles to avoid Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

15. Inquiry Process: Introduction & Warm-Up 01/29/12 Set up expectations for the observation Emphasize your role as an “observer” and “learner” Ask general questions about the participant What is a typical day like for you? What kinds of tasks do you do regularly? What are some occasional tasks? Where does today’s task fit in the day? What are common roadblocks? (master vs apprentice) Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

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17. Inquiry Process: Main Observation 01/29/12 Observe the participants What are they doing? What tools are they using? How are they using the tools? Have they developed any work-arounds? Occasionally ask for the participant to describe what they are doing, providing any necessary explanations, clarifications, walk-through of actions. Take copious notes. Video record, if possible. Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

18. Inquiry Process: Follow-Up & Wrap-Up 01/29/12 Follow-Up After the main observations, ask the participant any follow-up questions you may have regarding your observation which his/her memory is still fresh. Wrap-Up Ask the participant about his/her experience and perspective on the inquiry process Was anything anxiety provoking? Was there anything you would like to have been done differently? Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

19. Inquiry Results: What to collect 01/29/12 What tools do participants use? Formal tools? Informal tools? What brands? Behavior sequences Order of actions is important to understanding how the participants think about the task Methods of organization How do the participants organize the information they use ? (out of necessity, convenience, importance?) What kinds of interactions do participants have? What are the important parties in the transfer of knowledge? Are they people? Are they processes? Is the information shared? What is the nature of the interaction? Collect Artifacts Artifacts are the non-digital tools people use to help them accomplish the tasks they’re trying to do. (ex: if you are interested in learning how people schedule their events, photograph their daily calendar) Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

20. “ The output from customer research is not a neat hierarchy; rather, it is narratives of successes and breakdowns, examples of use that entail context, and messy use artifacts” Dave Hendry 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

21. Research Analysis 01/29/12 What are people’s values? People are driven by their social and cultural contexts as much as their rational decision making processes. What are the mental models people build? When the operation of a process isn’t apparent, people create their own models of it What are the tools people use? It is important to know what tools people use since you are building new tools to replace the current ones. What terminology do people use to describe what they do? Words reveal aspects of people’s mental models and thought processes What methods do people use? Flow is work is crucial to understanding what people’s needs are and where existing tools are failing them. What are people’s goals? Understanding why people perform certain actions reveals an underlying structure of their work that they may not be aware of themselves. Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

22. 01/29/12 Will Evans | Manager, User Experience Design “ People from different teams engaged in affinity diagramming is as valuable as tequila shots and karaoke. Everyone develops a shared understanding of customer needs, without the hangover or walk of shame” 01/29/12 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

23. Research Analysis: Affinity Diagrams 01/29/12 Creates a hierarchy of all observations, clustering them into themes. From the video observations, 50-100 singular observations are written on post-its (observations ranging from tools, sequences, interactions, work-arounds, mental models, etc) With entire team, notes are categorized by relations into themes and trends. Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

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25. Thanks!