VIDEO OF THE TALK: https://youtu.be/oeSsyb-tzfo Understanding your users' behaviours, needs and motivations is key to design a kickass web product.  Learn about quick, easy and efficient user research methods to build user-centered products and services. This workshop will be led by Charlotte Breton Schreiner, Senior UX Architect. Whether you are an entrepreneur building a prototype, a developer crafting a product during a hackathon or a designer who wants to test ideas with end users, this workshop is for you. We will cover accessible user research methods that anyone can apply without any prior UX knowledge. During the workshop, you will have the opportunity to try some of these methods with the other participants and realize how powerful taking a user-centered approach can be.  Le Wagon Workshop, Tuesday 24th October 2017

1. User Research methods
to kickstart your projects
UX 101
Charlotte Breton Schreiner

2. About me
charlottebretonsch.com
charlottebretonsch@gmail.com
@bretonsch
https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlotte-breton-schreiner/

3. Who are you?
• Developer
• Entrepreneur
• Visual Designer
• UX Designer/Researcher
• Student at Le Wagon

4. What is user experience?
INTRODUCTION

5. Donald Norman,
the father of
« user experience »
« I invented the term
because I thought
human interface and
usability were too
narrow. I wanted to
cover all aspects of
the person's
experience with the
system. »

6. Definition by
Nielsen Norman Group
« User experience »
encompasses all
aspects of the end-
user's interaction with
the company, its
services, and its
products.

7. User experience is a
team effort.
• Everyone impacts the
user experience. For
example:
• If a developer introduces a
bug, it impacts the user
experience.
• If a product manager don’t
take into consideration
users needs, features user
don’t need might be
prioritised.

8. Top 20 reasons why
startups fail
http://bit.ly/Top20ReasonsWhyStartupsFail
by Vic Lance for Forbes
No market need42%
Get outcompeted19%
Poor product17%
Ignore customers14%

9. User research doesn’t
have to be expensive
or time-consuming.
• Building a product or
service people don’t want
or can’t use is expensive
and time-consuming.
• Anyone can practice user
research.

10. What is user research?
INTRODUCTION

11. UX without user
research is not UX
• A great user experience is
an experience which
meets your users’ needs
and expectations.
• User research provides
you with methods to find
out those needs.
• Designs are assumptions
until validated with end
users.

12. User experience
activities in the
product and service
design cycle
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-research-cheat-sheet/
by Susan Farrell from Nielsen Norman Group

13. A landscape of user
research methods
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/which-ux-research-methods/
by Christian Rohrer from Nielsen Norman Group

14. Qualitative
Interviews, usability
studies, focus groups…
Why.
Minimum 5 users.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/why-you-only-need-to-
test-with-5-users/

15. Quantitative
Email surveys, intercept
surveys, analytics…
Minimum 80 users.
https://help.surveymonkey.com/articles/en_US/kb/How-
many-respondents-do-I-need
How many.

16. Job to be done
METHOD 1

17. • McDonald’s wanted to
increase the sales of their
milkshake.
• Ask demographic profile
types what is the best
flavour, no sales increase.
• People hire milkshakes to
fill their stomach and keep
them alert on the road.
The story behind the
job to be done method
http://bit.ly/JobsToBeDoneVideo
by Prof. Clayton Christensen

18. How does the job to be
done method works?
Late stage (ideal) or early
stage on competitors
From 20 minutes
per participant
Recently activated user
Interview with a pre-
defined set of questions

19. What will you learn
with the job to be done
method? User frustrations
User motivations
Competition
User journeys

20. Script
http://bit.ly/JobsToBeDoneInterviews
by Alan Klement

21. 1. When did you purchase the product?
2. Where were you?
3. What time of day was it? (daytime/ nighttime?)
4. What was the weather like?
5. Was anyone else with you at the time?
6. How did you purchase the product?
7. Did you buy anything at the same time?

22. 7. When did you first realise you needed something to solve
your problem?
8. Where were you?
9. Were you with someone?
10.What were you doing, or trying to do when this happened?

23. 7. Tell me about how you looked for a product to solve your
problem.
8. What kind of solutions did you try? Or not try? Why?

24. 13.Did you ask anyone else about what they thought about
the purchase you were about to make?
14.What was the conversation like when you talked about
purchasing the product with your spouse/friend/parents?
15.Before you purchased did you imagine what using the
product would be like? Where were you when you were
thinking this?
16.Did you have any anxiety about the purchase? Did you
hear something about the product that made you
nervous? What was it? Why did it make you nervous?

25. Additional questions
1. What was the problem you were trying to solve when you
purchased the product?
2. Do you feel that the product solved your problem? Why?

26. Adapt the method
to your own scenario
• Purchase/buy can
be replaced by
download, sign-up,
or first-encounter.
• The product can be
replaced by service
or a company name.

27. Use case: Enki

28. Meet Jane

29. What was the problem
you were trying
to solve when you
downloaded our app?

30. I was looking for something to do during my commute.
Something useful. I tried a lot of things. After reading for a
long time, I got tired. Plus it’s hard to read on the train when
it’s busy because there is no physical space.
Then I used my phone to go on Facebook and Instagram but
it’s not useful. Then I downloaded Duolingo to learn
languages but the lessons were too long to complete.
And finally, I found Enki, the 5 minutes workouts. It fitted
perfectly because it’s short and doesn’t use as much data as
Codecademy.

31. Learn something useful
Low network data
consumption
Short amount of time
Takeaways

32. When did you first
realise you needed
something to solve
your problem?

33. When I changed my job and the commute went from 20min
to 1h. I left my job which I was trained for to do something
else. I am now a community manager for a tech startup.
People say that Singapore is the new silicon valley, I want to
be part of it. I want to learn something new.
Code is my first choice because there is a lot of jobs out there
and it pays well.

34. New job
Long commute
From 20 min to 1h
New industry
Takeaways

35. Do you feel that our
app solved your
problem? Why?

36. At first, I thought it would. But it took me 20 minutes to
understand, not 5 minutes! It’s not basic enough. There is a
lot of jargon I cannot understand. I found myself constantly
confused. It’s so abstract!
If you didn’t contact me, I would have dropped completely but
your email made me think twice.
I deleted your app because my phone was running out of
space. I had to clear stuff. I uninstalled a lot of apps at the
same time. I thought about re-downloading but maybe it was
just not suitable.

37. Too hard… 20 minutes
instead of 5 minutes
Phone running out of
space
Takeaways

38. How could we use
these learnings to
improve Enki?
• Complete beginner
content
• Glossary to reference
technical terms
• Offline mode to reduce
data consumption
• Reduce app size

39. Survey

40. Guided fantasy
METHOD 2

41. • Invented by Tim Mott.
• What would be a word
processing program?
Didn’t exist at the time.
• Letters with blinking
background.
• Insert something between
two letters.
• Invention of the cursor.
The story behind the
guided fantasy method

42. How does the guided
fantasy method
works?
Any stage but ideal for
early stage
From 15 minutes
per participant
Prospective user
Interview with one key
question

43. What will you learn
with the guided fantasy
method?
User mental model
Machine versus human
Wow effect

44. Script

45. Put users in front of a black screen.
1. Imagine that you have a tool to assist you in code reviews.
How does it work?
2. What do you see? What can you do?
3. What else do you see? What else can you do?

46. Use case: Prodo.ai

47. Meet Alex

48. Imagine that you have a tool
to assist you when you
review the code people add
to your open source project.
How does it work?

49. The tool works like GitHub because GitHub is cool. In the pull
request, I can see the changes that were made to the code. I
can approve or disapprove it. I can see an overview page
where the contributor explain what he changed, why and how.
I like the side by side comparison and the syntax colouring.
Code reviews are important because I cannot let unknown
contributors add things to my projects without validating. I
don’t trust them enough. If people can write whatever they
want it’s impossible to follow the code. Furthermore, no one
writes perfect code for the first time.

50. Affection for current
tools
Perfection doesn’t exist
Approve or reject
Takeaways

51. Imagine that you have a tool
to assist you when you
review the code people add
to your open source project.
What do you see?
What can you do?

52. In my dreams… I can see a section somewhere where I can
see the list of all the problems with the code. All the errors I
would have to look for, myself. They are already highlighted.
For example: « It’s not going to work because it’s in conflict
with another file. » or « There is a security problem there. ».
And maybe the contributor can see all of that before
committing. It saves my time.
I would still need to review the code. Even in my dream, it’s
not perfect. Nothing can be perfect. I won’t trust an algorithm
enough to just merge without reading! There is too much at
stake. Merging a bug wastes everyone’s time.

53. Find bugs as soon as
possible
Empower to find
complex issues
Automated system
cannot be fully trusted
Takeaways

54. Imagine that you have a tool
to assist you when you
review the code people add
to your open source project.
What else do you see?
What else can you do?

55. Maybe it can also tell me who should review the pull request.
This already exists for the last person who wrote the code.
But it could be based on who is going to work on this part of
the code, who should learn about this part of the code…
It could force people to review as soon as possible. Display a
notification « Hey! John is waiting for a code review, please
go and review it now » because people are not on the tool
when the notification comes in.
It needs to be reviewed ASAP because that’s value in the
process of being created but it’s blocked because we are
waiting for something.

56. As soon as possible
Create value
Takeaways

57. • Ready for an assisted
code review.
• Create a trust relationship.
• Validate code before
review request is sent to
save time to reviewers.
• Tool to assist, not replace.
How could we use
these learnings to
build Prodo.ai?

58. Pop quiz
METHOD 3

59. The story behind the
pop quiz method
• Take advantage of the
events organised by the
company to do user
research.
• 30 minutes before the
event start.
• Involve team members in
the activity to gather more
feedback.

60. How does the pop quiz
method works?
Mid or late stage
From 5 minutes
per participant
Prospective users
or existing users
Simple questions for
usability tests

61. What will you learn
with the pop quiz
method?
User mental model
Usability issues
Interface predictability
and user expectations

62. Script

63. Show users a piece of paper with your interface.
1. What do you understand from this page?
2. Imagine that you are looking for a flat to rent.
What would you do?
3. What do you expect would happen if you did this?

64. Adapt the method
to your own scenario
• Page can be replaced by
text or picture.
• Looking for a flat to rent
can be replaced by any
task.
• Did this can be replaced
by any action.

65. Use case: LuneTravel

66. Meet Laura

67. What do you
understand
from this
page?

69. Imagine that
you are on
vacation in
Paris and want
to book a wine
tasting activity.
What would
you do?

71. What do you
expect
would
happen if
you clicked
on « Find
activities »?

73. Takeaways
Expects to see activities
after clicking on « find
activities ».
Type « Paris » in the field
and click on « find
activities ».
Homepage of a
marketplace to find
activities.

74. FIND ACTIVITIES
CREATE AN
ACCOUNT
CREATE ACCOUNT
ACTIVITIES
HOME PAGE

75. • Frustrates users who then
leave the website and
never come back which
lead to a low sign up
conversion rate and few
returning visitors.
• Users sign up without
knowing if the service is
for them which leads to a
high percentage of
inactive users.
How could it impact
LuneTravel?

76. • Remove the sign up page
from this flow.
• Show a glimpse of the
activities on the sign up
page.
• Explain the benefits of
signing up.
How could we use
these learnings to
improve LuneTravel?

77. What do you
understand
from this
page?

79. Imagine that
you found this
activity and
want to book it.
What would
you do?

81. What do you
expect
would
happen if
you did this?

83. Takeaways
Expects to see a form
with some fields to fill
and a confirmation.
Enter the number of
people and a date. Then
click on « enquire now ».
It’s the page of an
activity.

84. ENQUIRE NOW
MY ACTIVITY
LIST
ENQUIRE NOW
ENQUIRY FORM
ACTIVITY

85. • Frustrates users who are
less likely to complete the
enquiry process which
leads to a low booking
conversion.
• Users think their enquiry is
sent and never actually
send it which leads to a
low booking conversion
and bad reviews.
How could it impact
LuneTravel?

86. • Change the wording of the
« enquire now » button to
« add to my activity list ».
• Change the wording of
« my activity list » to « my
basket » and the name of
the button to « add to my
basket ».
• Skip the « activity list »
step and create another
button to allow this step.
How could we use
these learnings to
improve LuneTravel?

87. How to succeed
TIPS AND ADVICE

88. Create a friendly
and open-minded
atmosphere
• « I haven’t been involved in
the design. »
• Provide food and drinks
for long sessions.
• This is not a test, no right
no wrong answers.
• Introduce yourself and
start by asking contextual
questions.

89. Avoid bias
• Select participants in your
target audience.
• Be aware of the emotions
situations can create.
• Use neutral words.
• Don’t ask leading
questions or influence
participants’ answers.

90. Ask why, why, why
• Because I needed one and
didn’t have any.
• Because I needed to carry
water and food during the
day on the slopes.
• Why did you buy a
backpack?
• Because I was going
skying and needed it.

91. Thank you!
Thanks to Sylvie Daumal and Jonathan Baker-Bates for their precious insights on user research.
Icons from Gregor Cresnar, Vladimir Belochkin, Alex Furgiuele, Icondesk, iconsphere, artworkbean, Adiyogi, Kimmi Studio, Edwin Prayogi M, Landan Lloyd and Numero Uno.