This is a workshop I gave at 500 Startups on incorporating user research early on in your product definition.
500 Startups is a new kind of seed fund and startup accelerator. We believe successful internet startups are born from usable design, customer-focused metrics, and online distribution.
4. Workshop
- Why do user research
- How to recruit the right people
- write a screener
- promote your screener
- select interview participants
- How to learn about those people
- write an interview script
- conduct an interview
- take notes and collect artifacts
9. Screener vs Survey
- used to recruit the users - used to make charts/graphs
for your research study and draw conclusions
- no more than 10 questions - gazillion questions
- doesn’t use any branching - can use complicated logic
- a researcher’s tool - a marketer’s tool
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13. Tips on Writing Screeners
• Put incentive upfront in the description
• Don’t make any question required
• Start easy and broad eg: type of smartphone
• When enumerating always make other an option
• Add at least one open ended question
• Always ask for first name and email or phone as last questions
• Include the exact times and locations of the interviews
• Don’t use any branching logic
• Keep it to 10 questions
15. Promoting Your Screener
• place-specific people - touristy spot, farmer’s market
• current customers
• personal networks
• email
• twitter - #competitor’s company @specific people
• facebook - ads, fan pages - no spamming :)
• linkedin - status updates, group admins
• places where they hang out online - groups, forums
• have people you know post it on your behalf
• craigslist as a last resort
16. Selecting Interview Participants
• variety from each question
• interesting use cases eg: iphone and android tablet
• ones who pique your interest from the open ended q’s
• ones who completed the whole form and didn’t skip q’s
17. Tips on Writing Interview Scripts
• Re-ask 1 or 2 screener questions
• Include time estimates for each section
• Ask open ended questions
Who, What, Where, When, Why, How
• Ask about specific times, NOT how often
• Ask about the past, not the future
• Get them to tell you stories, not just answer your questions
• Give them activities to do, so you have artifacts afterwards
19. Tips on Conducting Interviews
• Let them do 90% of the talking
• Leave awkward moments of silence
• Follow up with “tell me more”
• Bring another person with you to be your notetaker
• Take notes - timestamped in Excel
• Record with Flip cameras, or screenflow, skype, etc if remote
• Call them out on inconsistencies and ask for clarification
• Break up the talking with little activities eg: drawing, timelines etc