Author: admin

As UX professionals, we’re always striving to truly understand the people we’re designing for. During the pandemic, when all we could do was remote user testing, interviews and surveys (if we were lucky, we used dscout to run diary studies to get some badly needed user-recorded context) , our understanding fell short of revealing the full picture with a high level of details, and the more. nuanced why’s to our users’ actions (or lack thereof).

Now that we are all more of less back to our regular lives, we can again strive to build a better understanding of our users’ ways of accomplishing their goals.

Consider  contextual interviews.

This approach involves watching and interviewing people in their typical environments. Y It’s often described simply as “shadowing someone, looking over someone’s shoulder and asking questions,” with a focus on observing customers where they naturally operate, whether that’s at their desk, in a grocery store, or at home.

Why choose this immersive approach?

• Revealing the ‘Why’: Most surveys and classic usability tests tell you what the problem is (e.g., a process step is problematic or users have trouble with a specific task), but it’s very difficult to identify the underlying root cause or the why from this data. Contextual interviews allow you to meet users and observe them in context to understand their thinking and rationale.
• Uncovering Unconscious Behaviors: People often act in a way they aren’t even conscious of. By watching users in their usual habitats, you can identify problems, inefficiencies, or workarounds they compensate for without realizing. Users are unlikely to report behaviors they aren’t aware of.
• Memory is highly contextual: When customers are not “in the moment,” they often forget the important details critical for successful product and service experiences. Observing them in their environment triggers their memories and allows for more accurate recall of their processes.
• Identifying Ingenious Solutions Contextual research can reveal “amazing lengths” that “superusers” go to make existing (flawed) systems work. Observing these real-world innovations can inform and infuse what and how you design. Swiffer was born when researchers observed homemakers as they were cleaning their kitchen floor.
• Get a different lens to experience reality: You must start by dispelling your (and your company’s) assumptions about what customers need. Even if you were the target customer in the past, the world changes, and you are not the customer today. Contextual research helps you embrace your customer’s current reality and challenges.

1. Getting Started: The Contextual Interview Mindset

You are there to learn and observe, and not to give advice or educate.

Imagine you are an actor learning to play their role or taking over for them while they are away.

Conducting the Interview: Steps and Advice

Contextual interviews should ideally be about 90 minutes long, though this can vary depending on the participant group. You need enough time to observe their typical activities and talk to them about their perspective. Regarding the number of interviews, aim for 8 to 12 people per relevant user group to identify trends, but remember that any amount is always better than zero.

Here are some pointers for conducting the interview:

• Observe customers in their native environment, as they are doing the things you seek to improve through your products/services. The more immersive and closer to their actual day, the better.
• Ask questions: While observing, ask questions to understand why they are doing what they are doing. Examples of questions include:
  • What would I need to know to be successful at your job?
  • Where would I get started?
  • What would I have to keep in mind?
  • What could go wrong?
  • What drives you crazy sometimes?
  • How long have you been doing this?
  • How did you get started?
  • What do you like about the job?
  • What do you do when you are not here?
  • What do you hope to achieve?
  • What would make you feel accomplished/happy/satisfied?
  • Ask why they do things; even if they rationalize, their answers provide clues about how they frame problems and their underlying assumptions.
  • Ask customers what they would call a concept or action and use their terms.
• Be like them: Try to blend in and minimize your influence. Dress appropriately for the context, be ready to adapt to their environment (e.g., sitting on the floor, eating pizza), and if they take off their shoes, you should too.
• Minimize your influence – be a fly on the wall: It can be tough not to suggest solutions or features you know would help, but your role is to observe their perspective and reality, no matter how difficult it is to watch.
• Go with the flow: While you should have a set of questions, be ready to roll and let the conversation naturally head towards what’s important to them.
• Subtle recording: Use subtle methods like a wireless mic, a compact camera, or your cell phone for pictures. Bring a notebook, not a computer, for immediate note-taking. It’s a good sign if they follow their normal routine, like answering the phone, or getting up for a cup of coffee without considering you.

When observing, you can also consider:

• Artifacts: What physical or digital items are they using? What’s on their desk?
• Communication: How do they communicate and collaborate?
• Interruptions: What interrupts their work and how often?
• Related factors: What other tasks or tools are they using?

From Data to Insights: Organizing Your Findings

After collecting all your observations, notes, quotes, images, and videos, the process of making sense of it all can feel overwhelming. The key is to identify patterns and trends.

Here’s a recommended process:

1. Review and Write Down Observations: Go through your notes and recordings and pull out bite-sized findings, quotes, and observations about user actions. Write these down on sticky notes.
2. Organize by Participant and the six aspects listed below After reviewing each participant, organize your sticky notes. Then, align all the notes into six columns, corresponding to six aspects (what John Whalen calls Six Minds¹) of the experience.
   • Vision/Attention: What captures their attention? What are they looking for and why?
   • Wayfinding: How do they navigate within products or services? What do they expect?
   • Language: What words do they use? What does this suggest about their expertise?
   • Memory: What assumptions do they make? When are they surprised or confused?
   • Decision Making: What are they trying to accomplish? How are they framing problems? What decisions do they make, and what blocks them?
   • Emotion: What are their goals and worries? How do they feel? Some findings may overlap, but categorize each under the most important component for you as the designer.
3. Look for Trends and Create Segmentation: Look for trends and commonalities across participants. This can lead to audience segmentation and provide important insights for future product direction.

Conclusion

Contextual inquiry is a powerful method for UX researchers to move beyond surface-level understanding and truly grasp the complexities of users’ lives, work, and needs. By observing explicit behaviors and implicit nuances in their natural environment, you gain insights that surveys and usability tests often miss. Embracing this approach allows you to step into your users’ reality, leave assumptions at the door, and discover the ‘why’ behind their actions. The insights gathered through this immersive process can lead to more informed design decisions and, ultimately, better product and service experiences.

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1. John Whalen, PhD: Design for How People Think. Using Brain Science to Build Better Products. O’Reilly, 2019 ↩︎

What is Inclusive User Experience?

As the name suggests, users (people, site visitors, clients, customers, etc) feel that they personally are considered and welcome in that space, be it digital or physical. One example is the

Humans come in all shapes and sizes, abilities, preferences, cultures, past experiences, identities, and sensitivities. Caring individuals take all that into account when interacting with us in person, reading us and our reactions. But can user interfaces do that?

How do we go about creating inclusive experiences?

Can user interfaces communicate our respect for our users?

To a large extent, yes. Whether they accomplish that depends largely on the thoughtfulness of the design.

1. While we share our basic humanity and a desire to be treated with respect, we can NOT assume that people using our product are just like us. They are not. I am not like the person who, just to take a not-so-random example, designed LinkedIn (don’t get me started) or Facebook. Previously, I listed a few dimensions of how we differ (and I did not even get into situational and temporary variability) and as a result, we have different needs and expectations.
2. A lot of these differences are basic, such as skin color. One great example of an interface that does it right comes from E.L.F., a cosmetic company. Their website does not just pay lip service (pun intended) to embrace all skin colors but helps their customers find the right tints both based on adjectives (such as fair, tan, rich) AND by uploading/getting an image of your face when they choose ‘virtual try-on’.

3. For many of these differences, we express our respect for our users by giving them choices and not imposing our own preferences (e.g., pronouns, greetings, tone, settings of non-static content).