I looked all around for a better quote than this, perhaps from someone a little higher up in the UX firmament than yours truly. Unfortunately, though, you’re stuck with me.
It is one of my all-time favorite topics however. I find it applies to a lot of newer researchers especially, but to more seasoned ones as well, especially if they are short on time or just forget.
What I am talking about here? Well, I guess it’s just a plea for a little more high-level thinking. Let me give you an example…
Say you’re writing up a usability test you just ran. Now, a traditional approach would be just to report things task by task. You know, task 1 had an 87% completion rate, as well as these particular issues. Same deal with task 2, task 3 & all on down the line.
But what about those issues that came up on all – or at least on multiple – tasks? Just mentioning them for each task doesn’t really give the reader an idea of how pervasive – and important – they might be.
Another approach – especially if you have, say, a single task with multiple steps or pages – is to go screen by screen. Screen x had these issues, screen y these, screen z none, yada yada yada. Unfortunately, you’re going to have the same problems with that approach as well. What issues spanned multiple screens? What are some of the larger problems here?
I guess a lot depends on how you think about your research. If it’s just like a punch list for a new house, say, go for that bottom-up approach. If, however, you’d like to engage with your audience at a higher level – maybe even learn ‘em a few things – you might want to sum things up a little more.
If, for example, terminology is an issue across tasks or screens, simply put in a slide solely on that topic. Yes, you can mention where that appears, but I think it’s better that the team knows this is a larger issue. Heck, they might even want to do a review of all the screens or functions to make sure it’s taken care of everywhere. After that, they may even go so far as to apply that learning to their next project, and the one after that, and the one after that…
I do find that there are topics that seem to go across multiple projects & multiple teams – nav, graphics, accessibility, mental models, TMI, affordances … In fact, you can even start to track some of these and even address them upfront, separate from any particular project. In other words, help your team address root causes, not every little nit.
Same thing applies to surveys, focus groups, and other research methods as well. As an example, I just read a report that separated out quantitative survey results into each individual question, then tackled verbatims separately. How nice it would have been if the researcher had combined those two, identifying some larger themes along the way. That seems to be something that most researchers do naturally on interviews and ethnographies. I’m not sure why that wouldn’t apply all around.
So, in sum, don’t leave your results half-baked. Go that extra step and give them something that’s easy and pleasant to digest. And, whatever you do, don’t just give ‘em a recipe! Go ahead and plop that amazing dish right on their plates in front of them.
Tell me, why does it seem that all my favorite metaphors involve food?
