Thread by @joenatoli

Them: "We never have enough time to do proper user interviews."

Me: "How much time do you have?"

Them: "a week."

Me: "Let me tell you a story..."

And the story, #UX and #design friends, goes like this:

(1/11)

I was consulting with an organization, whose team needed to do some research; interviews specifically. They said "well, we have 24 hours based on our schedule…but we have to get to this other work to make deadline and right now it's all hands on deck."

(2/11)

So the team can't spare the manpower or the people and there were lots of reasons why that date couldn't move. In the end, we got eight hours.

Eight hours to talk to users and get some sense of what's going on here.

(3/11)

In these situations, you have to get REAL — fast. What you *want* is irrelevant and any time you spend bitching about it is time wasted. So — what can we do in eight hours?

I suggested to the team that we spend 15 to 20 minutes with five users. Which is what we did.

(4/11)

We recorded the interviews via audio, ran it through transcription software which was about 80% accurate. A lot of garbled words, but very usable. Three of us sat down at a table, each person with a hard copy of the transcripts of all 5 interviews and a red sharpie.

(5/11)

Here's what we're looking for: anything that shows up in *all five* of those conversations.

Same comment, same complaint, same part of the app that was an issue, same point of interaction, same thing they couldn’t find. If it shows up more than once, circle it in red.

(6/11)

And then we're gonna put our heads together, make a master list of all this stuff and that's what we're presenting.

And then we're gonna spend another couple hours thinking: what does that mean in terms of what we start designing tomorrow?

(7/11)

It tells us that these are five things that are potentially issues that we have to address in that design work.

Do we *know* these are the right things?

No.

Are we *certain* we're making the right calls?

Also no.

What we have are CLUES — and that's it.

(8/11)

Clues to point us in the direction we need to go in terms of solving problems for these users + this business. Issues we need to design for + do our best to solve.

We design it the best of our ability, get it in the build, put it out there, see how people do with it.

(9/11)

And we're gonna find out how right we are (or aren't).

That's the gig. It's not about being right — it's about getting REAL. Using what you've got to work with.

Because when you're up against the wall like this, there's no way to BE right.

It's not possible.

(10/11)

So the next time you have less time or resources than you'd like — and you can't do anything to change it — take a look around. Look outside formal processes, best practices. Improvise.

Something is ALWAYS better than nothing.

(11/11)

#uxResearch #uxDesign #LetsGetRealAboutUX