Interacting with users at a distance

- A large part of the in-person sessions I run involves interacting with real users. We learn pain-points in initial site visit observations, and then see if our paper prototype remove the pain in usability test sessions. There's no substitute for physical site visits, but if you're working remotely, that may just not be an option. If that's the case, then video calls with representative users are a good second best. Every team member should be involved real time and taking notes in at least two different virtual visits. You already have all the technology you need for these visits. Any video conferencing tool will do the trick, but I really suggest that you use one that doesn't require any installation or setup. Several companies have video conferencing apps that run entirely in a browser and which don't require app downloads if they used on a mobile device or tablet. There are many more opportunities for technical issues to completely get in the way of a remote user session, especially with less technically adept users. To make up for this you'll need to recruit more participants and also budget time at the beginning of the session for troubleshooting any video issues. Talking of recruiting, the process of finding participants is very similar for remote studies as for in-person ones. In fact, because you don't have the same geographical constraints, you may find that it's easier to find people who fit your specific criteria. It's great if your participant can give you a guided tour of their space, maybe using their cell phone as their video conferencing tool. But that requires a level of technical ability they may not have. You can either recruit with this in mind, asking some very careful questions to determine if people are capable of doing this and willing to share their spaces, or alternatively ask for a couple of photos of their space as part of the recruiting process. Obviously with full disclosure and agreement about how and where you'll use those photos in the future. And then use these photos to ask questions in the session itself. It's always beneficial to ask, "Can you show me how you do that," rather than just having participants describe what they do. If you have the opportunity, and if your participants are willing, then positioning the video conference camera to show their activity or screen-sharing are both ways to facilitate this. Again, if you think you'll be doing this, make it clear during the recruiting process. It's only fair to your participants to warn them what's expected of them in advance. As a last resort, you can always fall back to a telephone conversation if video just isn't going to work. That means the whole team needs a good understanding of what you want to find out before you start the sessions, because you'll have less visual cues to guide the conversation. It's unlikely you'll have enough trained user researchers to run each session, which means you're going to have to help your team members get up to speed with good observation and interview techniques before you let them lose. I cover non-leading questions and listening, probing and validating in a short five minute video called, "How to Ask Good Questions in Usability Interviews." And that's in my UX Insights Weekly core series. Even with this introduction to observation techniques, it's useful if you give each group of observers an introductory script to use and some set questions they can ask to kick things off and then to dive deeper during the session. Of course, team members can ask their own questions too, but they'll feel more confident if they have some set questions to fall back on, which cover the key areas you're interested in. Remind team members to take lots of notes throughout the session. Even if you're recording the meetings, you won't have time to go back through and pull out the key moments. The best notes are ones which call out the tasks your participants perform and the issues they have during those tasks, preferably using their own words. Remind team members not to put their own interpretation on what they're seeing and hearing and not to try problem solving during the session. If a participant says that something's a problem, then it's a problem, even if you personally know that the solution is really simple. Keep paying attention to what participants are telling you, rather than trying to come up with on-the-fly solutions to present to them. We'll get to the solution part later after we've gathered data from several different participants.