The Right Research

Being user-centred at every stage of your agile project

Practice workshop

Abstract

"UX" and "user centred" have been buzzwords in software and digital product design for nearly twenty years. In spite of this, there are still many software products for which users are the last group considered after the organisation, project sponsor, senior stakeholders, and the team.

Content:
Learn how user research and data analytics work with agile software development, understand the differences between quantitative and qualitative research and when to use them, and discover how to find the right people to be your research participants. Plan your own research approach for a project you are working on now.

Objectives:
Workshop participants will emerge with an understanding of how research can help guide and de-risk complicated projects, as well as have a sense of what types of research they can use in their own work.

Audience background

For software pros who have heard a lot about "UX" and "user centred" product design but aren't sure how to do it
Relevant jobs: project managers, product owners, business analysts, developers, UI designers

Benefits of participating

Gaining benefits for your projects from more than just user testing or multivariate testing
Avoid using the wrong research method and ending up with misleading "answers" to your product questions
Stop guessing, copying your competitors, and blindly experimenting your way through your product roadmap

Materials provided

Templates, case studies, post-it notes, markers
Takeaway research reference

Process

Exercises
Group sharing/presenting back

Detailed timetable

00:00 - 00.05 - Welcome and intros around the room: what's your previous experience of research on software projects?
00:05 - 00:15 - Qual and quant research: the yin and yang of user insight
00:15 - 00:20 Quick breakout session - pin the right research type on the question
00:20 - 00:25 Playback - was this easy, or difficult? Were any of the questions hard to identify as qual or quant? Why?
Project phases: the typical phases of an agile software development process.
00:25 - 00:35 Breakout groups: using your group case study, what questions about your users and their experience do you think you might have during each phase?
00:35 - 00:40 The researcher's toolkit: how researchers get the right info to answer the right questions the right way
00:40 - 00:50 Breakout groups: using your group's case study, draft a research approach that could give insights into your users and how your product needs to develop.
00:50 - 00:55 Playback & feedback

00:55 - 00:60 Conclusions (group discussion)
Thinking about what you're working on right now, what questions to you have about your end users and how would you go about finding answers?

Outputs

Outputs:
Research methods content

Presenters

  1. Julianne Bowman