Presented at the Web Conference at Penn State 2013 #psuweb

1. User Research Power Tool: Pareto
Principle Based User Research
Presented By: Jennifer Aldrich
Content Strategist at Schoolwires Inc.

2. Who are you?
Jennifer Aldrich
• Content Strategist for Schoolwires Inc.
• Lover of all things UX
• Twitter Addict @jma245
• Blogger http://userexperiencerocks.com
I’m also...

3. A Mom

4. An Amateur Photographer

5. Our Plan
This is our plan of attack for today’s session:
1. Discuss the Pareto Principle.
2. Examine how it can be applied to user
research.
3. Go through the start to finish process of how
to set up, conduct and analyze your own
Pareto Principle based usability study.
4. Brainstorm industry applications & answer
questions.

6. Part 1. What is the Pareto Principle?

7. Also known as the…
• 80/20 Rule
• Law of the Vital Few
• Principle of Least Effort
• Principle of Imbalance
• 80/20 Principle
• Pareto Law

8. Pareto Principle
80% of Results 20% of Effects

9. Vilfredo Pareto
• Pareto realized in 1897 that the distribution of
wealth in England was predictably unbalanced,
and then he realized that the same was true in
other countries throughout history. [1]
• He broke it down by given an example that 20
percent of the population could control 80
percent of the wealth, and so on. [1]
• It turns out that this principle can be applied to
all kinds of situations in life. [1]

10. Joseph Moses Juran
• Juran realized that it applied to crime among
criminals, accidents among dangerous
processes, and tons of other situations in life
[1]
• Juran also figured out that you could combine
the 80/20 principle with statistics to improve
industrial and consumer goods. [1]
• At first no one in the US took him seriously, so
he went to Japan and made a killing.

11. Which companies have taken
advantage of the Pareto Principle?
• IBM applied the Pareto Principle in the 60’s.
They found that 80 percent of a computers
time is spent using 20 percent of its operating
code, so they rewrote their operating code
and made the most used 20 percent very
accessible and user friendly. [1]
• Apple, Lotus, and Microsoft also followed suit,
applying the 80/20 rule to improve their
systems and software. [1]

12. Why should I care?
• The reason this concept is so important is
because it’s completely counter intuitive.
– All features and services and problems are NOT
created equal. Some things have a gigantic impact,
and identifying and resolving them can mean the
difference between your product or company
sinking, or swimming.

13. Part 2: How is this related
to user research?
• My research was inspired by a blog post by Jeff
Sauro:
http://www.measuringusability.com/blog/pareto
-ux.php
• Apply the Pareto Principle to usability research to
identify the top percentage of your product pain
points, then fix them!
• In my case, this ended up bizarrely accurate, 18%
of our core product areas were causing 83% of
our clients’ frustration! (I’ll show you the stat
breakdown soon, I promise!)

14. Part 3: How do I set this up?

15. Step 1: Recruit Testers
• Who do I recruit?
– Internal Clients vs. General Public
• Pros and Cons
– General Public Recruiting Services
• Survey Monkey Audience

16. I’ve got my testers, now what?

17. Step 2: Create your Survey
• What tools do I need?
– Survey Monkey (It’s cheap!) or equivalent
• What should I ask?
– Question 1: If you could change one aspect of
our product, what would you change?
• Give a list of all core content areas, allow them to
select only one.
– Question 2: How would you change it?
• Make this open ended paragraph format.

18. Survey: Check. What’s next?
My Survey Rocks!

19. Step 3: Launch Your Survey
• What tools do I need?
– MailChimp (It’s free or cheap!) or equivalent
• Dashboard with killer stats
• Great for tracking
• Create lists and groups
• Campaign Templates
• Unsubscribe canned spam rules are handled for you

20. I launched it!
I’m patiently awaiting responses!

21. I have a flood of data! What do I do
with all of it?!

22. Step 4A: Analyze your data - Totals
• This is where we create some rocking statistics
for your stakeholders.
– Throw your data into a spreadsheet.
– Sort by core product area.
– Go through your data and get totals for how many
responses came from each core product area.
– Order them from most to least.

23. It’ll look something like this:
• Headlines – 26
• Editor – 21
• Files and Folders – 21
• Forms and Surveys – 21
• Groups – 17
• Calendar – 12
• Reports - 8
• Remaining 33 Areas Total - 26

24. Step 4B: Analyze your data -
Respondents
• Now look at the total number of respondents
and do some quick math.
– Let’s say I had 152 respondents total.
– Take the total responses for each key area, and
divide it by the overall number of respondents to
get the percentage of respondents who identified
each key area.

25. It’ll look like this:
• Headlines – 26 / 152 = (17%)
• Editor – 21/152 = (14%)
• Files and Folders – 21/152 = (14%)
• Forms and Surveys – 21/152 = (14%)
• Groups – 17/152 = (11%)
• Calendar – 12/152 = (8%)
• Reports – 8/152 = (5%)
• Remaining 33 Areas Total = 26/152 = (17%)

26. Show me the data…

27. Pareto Principle User Research Data
• 40 Key Product Functional Areas
• 83% of the 152 responses fell into 7 key
functional areas, 17% fell into other functional
areas.
• The 7 key areas identified make up 18% of the
40 key product functional areas. (7/40 = 18%
rounded)
• Therefore, 18% of our key functional areas
were causing 83% of our clients’ frustrations.

28. Crazy Right? Dead on. Report Time.
• First I gave an overview of Pareto Principle in 2
sentences, then the gave the 83% 18% finding
information.
• Then I gave our stakeholders the deeper stats:
– The 7 Key Functional Areas Identified:
• Headlines 17%
• Editor 14%
• Files & Folders 14%
• Forms & Surveys 14%
• Groups 11%
• Calendar 8%
• Reports 5%

29. Finally, I grouped the user feedback
by functional area
• It made a neat package that my stakeholders
loved.
– At a glance they could see the big picture
• These are the little things we can fix to make a BIG
impact!
• I don’t know about you, but my stakeholders love
statistics!
– If they wanted to deep dive, they could.
• Including the individual pieces of feedback organized by
area gave an in depth account of what the users
reported, and the changes they were requesting.

30. We were STUNNED by some of the
areas that were identified!

31. Why Should My Organization Do
This Research? Top 5 Reasons

32. 1. Awesome for feature enhancement
planning! You know what they want!

33. 2. It will save you a boat load of cash in
potentially wasted development hours.

34. 3. Stakeholder meetings
go from this:

35. To This

36. 4. Clients feel they are being heard

37. 5. Method is Cheap and Effective

38. Part 4: Industry Applications
• Let’s take some time to review some ways that
this research can be applied to specific
industries.

39. Tech Company
• List your core content areas and replicate this
study exactly the way we’ve described it.
• To apply this research to any other industry,
you just need to identify the core content
areas, or primary tasks that you want your
testers to evaluate.

40. Health Software
• View account
• Submit claim
• Check claim status
• Locate contact information
• Find a provider, etc.

41. Educational Websites
• Navigation
• Sign in process
• Ease of locating contact information
• Content organization
• Quality of search functionality

42. Mobile App Research
• Sign in screen
• App content
• Navigation
• Icon clarity
• Completeness of services offered

43. Retail Store Research
• Ease of locating product prices
• Store layout
• Customer service
• Check out process
• Staff professionalism
• Quality of goods sold
• Availability of products sold

44. The Sky is the Limit
• This type of research can really be applied to
any industry out there.
• It’s quick, cheap and easy to conduct, and
scales beautifully whether you’re a start up or
a major corporation.

45. References
Koch, Richard. The 80/20 Principle: The Secret
of Achieving More with Less. London: Nicholas
Brealey Publishing, 2001. Print.

46. Tools Mentioned
• Survey Monkey
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
• Survey Monkey Audience
http://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/audience/
• MailChimp
http://mailchimp.com/

47. Favorite Design Book
• The Design of Everyday Things
By: Donald Norman

48. Thank you!
Thank you so much for your time! We’re going to
break for questions now.
If you think of a question after the session, or just want to say
hello, I’d love to hear from you!
• Twitter: @jma245
• Email: jenniferaldrich@live.com
• Blog: http://userexperiencerocks.com
I’ll be posting an overview of this session on my blog in the next day or two.