UXPA Boston 2018: Research is a team sport! Implementing an interviewing workshop to raise customer empathy

Presented by Hilary Dwyer, Elizabeth Quigley (LogMeIn)

• Researchers cannot interview everyone…
  • but product managers, for example, already interact with customers
  • How do we empower our colleagues to bring back findings & share?
• Developed a workshop!
  • Used active learning
    • minimal lecturing
    • lots of group work
    • hands-on practice
  • Demonstrates that research is a process and takes practice
• Workshop topics
  • Active Listening
  • Crafting Questions
  • Mitigating Bias (in asking questions, picking participating, analyzing data)
  • Analyzing Data
• Take-aways
  • Recognize when to interview
  • Craft effective questions
  • Develop trust with participants
    • e.g. not trying to evaluate them, or sell to them… trying to learn from them
  • How not to bias what people say
  • Engage like a researcher
  • Generate insights
  • Getting excited about research
• Types of interviews, depending on project lifecycle
  • Need discovery/validation
  • Concept discovery/validation
  • Product enhancement
• You can get deep qualitative data without statistical significance
  • 5-8 people
  • Use agencies or recruiters

Pilot sessions

• Helped us better understand what activities worked, figure out timing
• Developed a book to take-away for reference later
• Larger group works really well
  • 30 people can collect a ton of data in a day
  • better for participants to analyze their own data
• hypothesis -> research questions -> interview
• lots of free space for people sit, mingle

Lessons

• Use activities instead of lecture
• Provide lunch
• Share war stories… people love to hear researchers’ experience
• Allow for constant Q&A
• Train others to run the workshop
• Document in a facilitator’s guide