Regardless of whether you’re conducting research in a conference room or in a person’s house, you’ll want to set up your tools and materials before the session begins. This ensures you aren’t distracted getting things ready and helps put the participant at ease since you’ll convey professionalism and confidence.

Do you have all the printouts you need for the day? Are they in order? If your paperwork is disorganized, your confidence will get rattled and you can damage the quality of the session. Some forms are required, such as consent or nondisclosure agreements (NDAs), in order for a session to start. Simply put, have all paperwork sorted before meeting with the first participant.

Depending on how participants are recruited, which we will detail in Chapter 7, you may have a participant breakdown or cheat sheet. This includes summary information from the recruitment screener. Reviewing this information before participants show up lets you refer to them by name, ask tailored questions to ease them into the session, and gives you clues into areas you want to probe during the actual session.

Perform tech checks before and between sessions to ensure potential points of failures don’t pop up during your sessions. This is vital when you’re conducting research remotely, if you have remote observers, or if you are testing a prototype. Be aware of all existing issues so you can address them during your sessions and help participants navigate past them. If you know where the prototype will cause issues, you are better prepared to address them when they happen during the sessions.

For many stakeholders, observing UX research in any form is a new experience. Prior to starting sessions, you may need to review key rules observers should follow while sessions are taking place. If observers are in the room with the participant, these rules need to spell out what kind of behavior you expect. This will ensure observer bias is limited. See Chapter 8 for some basic ground rules for observers.

There are common supplies you’ll need when conducting qualitative research. Some supplies differ based on the research method you’re using, but we’ve attempted to create a sample list in Table 6-1.

Take the time between sessions to realign your mind and body. Research is draining, and every participant deserves the same level of attention and energy. Take time to give yourself a mental and physical recharge. This might mean having a coffee, spending five minutes on social media, or reading a page or two of your current book (we are both fans of James S. A. Corey’s Expanse book series if you happen to be a science fiction fan). This mental break is different for every person. You need to make it part of your process so you avoid burnout and don’t miss key details. In addition to the mental break, you might want to have a quick debrief discussion with your team. We cover these conversations in detail in Chapter 12.

With the focus on research and maximizing feedback, it’s easy to forget about something as simple as lunch. There have been many times we’ve skipped lunch because a session went over time or we simply lost track of the day. Learn from our mistakes and give yourself time each day to eat and take care of yourself.

Traffic comes in two forms. The first, and standard, form of traffic includes planes, trains, and automobiles. This is easy to research and plan for. The second form of traffic involves micro interactions with other people—in hallways, elevators, parking lots, and security lines. Again, err on the side of safety and always plan for the worst-case scenario. Fortunately, in today’s age of immediate Internet access, tools like Google Maps can help you plan trip times, and even set your planned departure time (see Figure 6-1).

Figure 6-1. Google Maps with custom trip time

One of the first lessons you’ll learn after conducting remote research for the first time is that most people don’t use online messaging tools on a daily basis. Shocking, right? This is easy to forget; as designers immersed in technology, we are used to having these tools at hand.

You should plan to spend the first 5–10 minutes of a remote session ensuring the participant has the necessary connections for an online conferencing tool. Explain how to mute and unmute their audio, how to show and hide their video, and how to either share their screen or request control of yours if you’re doing any sort of usability testing. If conducting unmoderated usability testing, be sure introductions and instructions are clear and the content is appropriate for the audience. This helps put the participant at ease and addresses technical issues they might experience so it doesn’t distract from the conversation later.

Include basic information on the project, a history of the product, and your reasons for conducting research. Participants now understand how their information is going to be used and why.

Write up short biographies of the team members conducting the research, along with their contact information. It’s also helpful to include photos for in-person sessions so that participants know and recognize you before meeting. If the plan or team changes, it’s importnat to update participants, as they will be expecting to see specific people the day of the session.

Research scammers exist, and sadly it’s one way people have their identity stolen. Include a customer service number or point of contact the participant can call to validate that the research is legitimate.

Provide a timetable of your arrival and when the session will end. This allows participants to schedule their day around the session, including securing child care or shuffling any other personal appointments.

Voice from the Streets: Ron Strawbridge, Senior Director of Member Experience, Express Scripts

When is one time the risks of poor planning were dangerous to your work?

Ninety-six stakeholders, a large conference room in New York, Japanese culture shock, and no solid plan other than to show the client what we do...

Two years ago, I stood across from our engagement leader in this very scenario and heard him say, “You got this, right?” as multitudes of suits piled into a corporate meeting space to share their well-thought-out business insights with me and the project team.

Then I heard the overhead speaker crack. Several more stakeholders were dialing in from overseas, and even more stakeholders were filing into the already packed conference room, all waiting to educate me on the ways of their business. This was not going to go very well.

How was I going to listen to them all? How were we going to attempt a card sort with folks in Asia? How was I going to learn the business strategy from now more than 100 individuals representing 50+ business interests?

It was enough to scare any user experience practitioner—regardless of how well seasoned he or she may be.

We did the best we could in that moment. We assigned note takers and broke the 100+ stakeholders into pods of 25 to work together. Then, the pods reviewed the output from the other pods.

But time was our enemy.

The analysis was overwhelming and took weeks to organize, let alone analyze. We were constantly behind. We brought on more resources, but just getting those resources up to speed was more strain on the team when we were already stretched beyond capacity.

No one wants situations like these, but addressing them up front with a logistical strategy to UX design makes all the difference.

I believe UX design is like solving a math problem. If you approach the problem incorrectly or without mindful thought from the beginning, then your entire solution may be false—or at best ineffective.

Chapter 6 are not just for trucking companies or soldiers of fortune. Mindfully planning and designing research means leveraging logistics to help you find the gems you need to take back, refine, and analyze.

The suggestions inside this book will help you do just that.

To be successful, we must practice in ways that force us to relish not just the design of a thing, but also the process of uncovering an understanding of what we are about to design.

Next time I will know to not just think about the activities I am going to conduct, but also be extra mindful about orchestrating the where, when, and how these understanding activities ought to take place.

Quite simply, state what you want to learn by doing the research. For example: How do people prepare for retirement at different stages of their life?

The why of research is sometimes difficult to state as succinctly as the what. Some guiding questions to define the why are: How is the target of the research tied to the product’s overall business strategy or the company’s culture? What risks will you be taking on by not learning about specific topics?

Here is your chance to include a little bit of the scientific method. Write down assumptions on the outcomes you expect to see. This doesn’t need to be long; simply stating, “We expect customers to find the authentication process cumbersome and expect the payment process to be straightforward” is sufficient. Now with this hypothesis documented, aim to prove it wrong. The purpose of research isn’t to prove your assumptions right, but to uncover truth in order to solve the real problem.

This is a script that you’ll read at the beginning of each session to give yourself some form of consistency. The information covered includes:

It’s good practice to revisit some of the questions that were presented in the recruitment screener (the specifics of which we’ll cover in Chapter 7). It will remind participants why they were recruited and give you hints on areas to ask probing questions. These are also easy questions to answer, so it gets the participants used to you asking them for information.

This is the bulk of your discussion guide and the home for the questions defined earlier in your preparations. You’ll want to break the questions up based on topic and flag those that are meant as follow-up. It’s good practice to assign time blocks to help remember when is a good time to move to the next topic.

No product team wants news about their product to be leaked to the press or their competitors. If you are working on a product, or an enhancement to an existing product, you’ll want to have an official nondisclosure agreement (NDA) for the participant to sign (see Figure 6-3). This document legally prevents participants from talking about what they see or do during the session.

Figure 6-3. Sample NDA

When you wish to record a session, it is best to capture a participant’s agreement by asking them to sign a waiver allowing you to do so (Figure 6-4). In some states, law might require this waiver. This document includes a description of how your team will use the recording. It’s important to stress that recordings are a backup to written notes and will never be shared outside the immediate product team. Some people don’t like to be recorded, and that’s OK. If this happens, show the participant all recording devices are put away and then proceed with the session.

Figure 6-4. Sample “permission to record” form

Another form to include asks permission of the participant to use any of their quotes when you report the research findings. Participants should understand that you’ll do your best to ensure that any quotes you use will not be identifiable. While not required, this form is a courtesy so people understand how your team may use their words and information.