I was invited to speak at the Global Reviews Digital Leader
Summit last week which focused on driving customer engagement, sales and
program velocity. The summit was a tremendous success with an impressive list
of attendees and speakers. It was
daunting to speak after Chris Ho from NAB and Barry Newstead from Australia
Post, who provided insightful and engaging presentations. That said, I enjoyed
presenting and being able to share my views on the importance of user research
in web design within an agile development process.
I thought I would take the opportunity to share some of my
presentation here.
The increased adoption of the agile development process within the digital industry presents a challenge for incorporating rigorous
research as part of the design process, particularly in the way that we have
traditionally approached research. This is due to the time involved in doing
research with rigour.
Not including research can result in building products which
do not meet user needs. This is ironic because this is also one of the reasons
for organisations embracing agile. That is to ensure the end product aligns
with user requirements instead of spending years building a product which is
not what people want.
At its essence research is about extracting information.
However that information only has value if it is accurate and can be relied
upon. To make doing research worthwhile we need to do it properly.
The problem: Conducting rigorous research within an agile development process
Research can be a slow process, potentially incompatible
with the rapid iterations of Agile. This is due to:
- Recruiting participants for research activities, for qualitative activities like interviews or moderated usability testing, which can take as much as 2-3 weeks
- Conducting qualitative activities such as interviews or contextual enquiry is time intensive. This typically constitutes days or weeks of work as opposed to hours.
- The analysis phase can also be time intensive; identifying the insights from research requires time opposed to regurgitating observations and direct feedback from users.
Incorporating design research into an agile process
Much like the culture shift which is required for going ‘agile’,
research also needs to become a part of the culture. Here are some ways to
include research in agile.
1. Effective planning: Research activities
must be planned for. Sprint zero can be used to define the research needs
generally, as well as the information sought from research. This could include
any outstanding questions regarding users and identifying the design assumptions
which require validation. Research activities can
then be scheduled for upcoming sprints which can accommodate the time involved
with recruitment. For example we can
schedule a round of usability testing for in 2 weeks time, to test the primary
design assumptions and include any questions which arise over coming weeks.
2. Using time efficient techniques and
tools: Online quantitative techniques such as un-moderated usability
testing, tree jack studies for testing IA, surveys and online card sorting can
be conducted without the lengthy fieldwork periods associated with qual
techniques.
Some of the great tools out there include Userzoom which is a
comprehensive suite of UX research methods including un-moderated online
usability testing, cards sorting, IA testing and survey capability. It is an enterprise
level tool which is used by Global Reviews. Optimal workshop, is
another example of the tools available, offering card sorting and IA testing.
A further factor reducing the time associated with utilising
these tools, is their great analysis functionality which can dramatically
reduce the amount of time taken to complete analysis in comparison to in-person
methods. Time is also saved in the collection of data.
3. Placing the right systems and processes
in place: A key requirement is setting up access to customers to be able to
get rapid feedback. A database of customers who are willing to participate in
research is ideal. This can be effectively supported by an active social media
presence. By having a system to get access to customers quickly it is possible
rapidly reduce the time involved in recruitment.
Customer can be asked to get involved in research during a
sign-up process or via communication channels such as email.
Another approach is to schedule research which takes place at
set intervals. For example scheduling customer interviews once a month, every
month, regardless of the research needs and information required. I heard a
great interview with Tomer Sharon on Gerry Gaffney’s fantastic UX Pod where he talked about using this type of approach at Google. He conducts
‘Fieldwork Fridays’ where he gets software engineers to conduct the research
with customers on a regular basis and argues that this has a huge positive
impact on their products.
Both of these approaches overcome the shortcomings of long
lead times for recruitment.
The key here is to have customers ready to participate in
research activities at short notice.
Example: bringing it together
To provide an example, I recently conducted a card-sort
within an agile team. There were questions about how the IA should be labelled
and grouped; an understanding of how customers thought about the content was
core to creating a successful design. Evidence was also required to justify
decisions to stakeholders. On a Wednesday morning I created the card sort in
Optimal Sort with around 40 cards. At midday it was sent out to customers. By
10AM the next day I was analysing the results and in the afternoon I was able
to provide feedback the product manager and the rest of the team. This was a
great example of having the right systems in place and making use of the right
tool to provide rigorous and highly rapid feedback.
