How to do your own User Research

The ability to do User Research is a very important core discipline for all product teams to acquire. “User testing” or “usability testing” is a key human-centered design practice. It points to a better way to do the “learning” part of building a product. It helps with the course correction along the way. I will deal with basic usability testing, how to prepare and conduct user interviews, and how to do basic qualitative data gathering.

The goal of User Research

When you’re conducting a user interview – sitting down and talking to that person – your goal is to see and experience their world and your product through their eyes. You already know what you think, and your team already knows what they think – you want to collect new data.

You already know what you think. You want to experience your product through your user’s eyes.

People will do the strangest things. As you start conducting user interviews, you will see people report all kinds of wacky things that make no sense. They will find a completely roundabout way to do something compared to what you had anticipated. But to these people, sometimes it just “makes sense” for them to do things that way. You want to understand why.

“Why is that the way the user did this thing?”

What you want to do, is to understand. You want to observe their behaviors, which aren’t working well for them – their pain points. Understanding this is interesting because it helps clarify the “why” behind specific actions. When you’re using analytics to unpack behavior – you may see “what” people are doing, but you would not understand “why” they are doing those things. Why did this design work better than that? Why are people dropping off at a certain point? What is preventing people from getting through some flow? Once you understand the “why,” you’ll be better able to fix it.

When using data analytics – you may see “what” people are doing, but you would not understand “why” they are doing it.

Note, however, that you’re not asking users to provide answers. You want to observe their existing behaviors. You want to understand why they’re doing these things and figure out their pain points. People are pretty bad at predicting their behaviors. They are not so great at reporting either, or even remembering accurately what they’ve done.

How to do your User Research

In a previous post – “Why you should do your own user research studies,” I explored why you would want to do your research studies. In this post, I will cover the basics of how to do your user research studies. This is not intended to be an exhaustive guide on the topic but rather an introduction with a simple process, tips and tricks, and a couple of templates to get you started.

What do you want to learn from your user research?

As you embark on this journey, you want to start by thinking about – “what you want to learn” with this process. This will guide you toward the discovery and usability questions you must ask.  I’ve included the following two templates to help you unpack this more.

• Template – DIY user studies – research plan
• Template – DIY user studies – interview guide

How do you find the participants for your user studies?

Once you have an idea of the kinds of questions you would like to ask, the next thing you want to think about is – how do you find people for your user studies. Who are the correct people, and how do you get them involved?

Finding people can take a fair amount of lead time, and can hold your process up, so this is why you want to start recruiting users as early in the process as possible – as soon as you know what you’re after.

What is a good sample size?

The next question is, “how many people do I want to include in the user study?”. Research has shown that the number of usability problems you find starts leveling off at around 5-6 people – after that, you get diminishing returns on your time and effort invested. You can even do smaller numbers if you want to iterate faster.

You may be surprised that this number isn’t larger, but the key is: this is not about statistical significance. If you recruit the correct people – who are representative of the actual users you have in mind- they will likely run into the same problems that other similar people will run into.

So, typically, after two or three people, you should start seeing some patterns emerge. Once you reach four or five users, the issues should start jumping out at you. Once you have learned enough, it is time to make some changes – because you will know the significant things you need to deal with.

How to create a screener questionnaire for your user studies

For this reason, it is worth investing some effort and being selective about who you want to recruit for your user studies. This is because the quality of the results you will get will be much better if you manage to recruit a representative sample. Otherwise, you will probably waste valuable time, as you will likely get unhelpful or irrelevant feedback. Especially considering that you’re going to use a small sample size.

By creating a screener questionnaire, you can target a large potential audience, automate data collection, and then quickly and easily select the best, most representative sample of people to include in your study. The template below will guide you through developing your screener questionnaire.

• Template – DIY user studies – writing a recruiting screener

Determining who you want to exclude from the sample is essential. Because the sample size is small, thus it’s easy to get skewed results, and your time is valuable – no need to waste it on collecting irrelevant data.

Should I outsource user studies or do it myself?

To execute the user studies, you can either “insource” or “outsource” the activity. If you use an external vendor, they should take care of most of the process, including recruiting participants, scheduling people, conducting the interviews, collecting the data, and compiling the feedback report.

The other approach is to do it yourself. This means you do your recruiting, own scheduling, conduct user studies, record the data, and draw inferences. With a little effort, it should be relatively easy for you to do much of this work quicker and at a lower cost than outsourcing it.

Where do I recruit people for my user studies?

To recruit users, you have many places to look. For example,

• There’s an online service called usertesting.com
• Use “classifieds” sites, online forums, Reddit, etc.
• Add a link to your product, email footer, or website.
• Post or advertise on social media – Twitter, Facebook, Google, Pinterest, Instagram, etc.
• Approach professional associations or clubs within the industry you are targeting

Template – DIY user studies – an invitation to participate

Legal and ethical considerations when conducting user studies

• You need to ensure you will comply with whatever SPAM rules there are.
• Also, note that you will be collecting a lot of personal information about people, so you must ensure you manage and store this information in compliance with privacy regulations.
• Remember to sign a non-disclosure agreement – and review all legal templates with your counsel.
  • In addition to the non-disclosure portion of the agreement,
  • it is important to include provisions to protect the ownership of the ideas generated through these user studies.
  • And also to get permission to record the sessions.
• Be careful to recruit and pay journalists, government workers, analysts, or big customers – as this may trigger procurement regulations or be construed as bribery.
• Don’t do site visits alone, especially when working after hours or dealing with minors.

The template below contains some sample text you can use for your social media posts, email invitations, or online adverts – to get you started.

Template – DIY user studies – non-disclosure agreement