User research can help you figure out two critical things: are you making the right product? And are you making that product right?
This makes it relevant from the concept development and prototyping phases, through to the continuous improvement of your website, app or product ecosystem.
Our UX researchers conduct carefully designed one-to-one interviews with users in their native language. This enables us to get inside their heads and to understand their challenges and what is really important to them.
Sometimes to really understand an issue you need a more thorough understanding of the context in which things are done. We observe users at work or at home, asking questions as we go to learn more.
Understanding people’s habits (and not what they think their habits are) takes time. Our diary studies prompt users to report on specific actions throughout the day, giving you a more comprehensive picture of triggers, motivations and how your product might fit into their lives.
Different to other research methods that explore behaviours and perceptions, participatory workshops give you insight that feed directly into your designs. In the workshops users show you how they think you should go about the design, helping you to prioritize tasks and information.
This is a useful method if you need to understand the language people use and how they would group and prioritize things. Unlike closed card sorting (where users are asked to sort things into named categories), open card sorting asks users to create and name their own categories.
Remote or traditional testing of your concept, prototype or designs on real people and assessing what works for them and what doesn’t.
Conduct user research to identify and explore problems that you think your business could help solve.
Get evidence on which to base decisions about features, IA, wireframes, visual design and language.
Sector
Undisclosed B2C
The Client
A large, well-established organisation that wanted to redevelop and extend their existing app
The deliverable
What we did
Usability testing, diary study, participatory design workshop
How it worked
Before design on the app could start we needed to find out:
what worked and what didn’t work in the existing app so we could avoid repeating design mistakes;
What did the company’s target users really want, and
How could or would they use the app.
To achieve number 1, we did usability testing on the existing app and interviewed the users to find out more about their current needs, goals and expectations.
Next we did a diary study. Over seven days, we got 24 people to use private Instagram accounts to log everything they did that related to our client’s area, including where they were, who they were with and what they were feeling. We then interviewed each one. This gave us detail about people’s habits, which enriched the personas and the user journey maps that we’d sketched up based on the usability testing interviews.
Finally we ran two participatory design workshops, where we asked people to draw the key screens and the flow of their ideal app. We also asked them to propose features and prioritize them. This gave us features ideas for the new app. With all of this to work with, we were able to work closely with our partners and complete the prototype.
No matter where in the development process you are, or what budget you have, if you are developing products for the users in Hong Kong, Singapore or other Asian countries, we can adapt our methods to get you the evidence you need to improve your designs.
