How to prime a participant for the ultimate design research experience, no matter your context
This post focuses on how I plan, sequence, and conduct empathic research to uncover emotional deltas for the products and services I build. I typically conduct interviews with 6–8 individuals that represent a specific population in order to feel comfortable in with insights that will inform initial ideation. Specifically I tackle:
· How to prepare to gain empathy in context of a target population
· Specific interview techniques that get at individuals’ current perspectives
· Specific co-design techniques that get at ideal future state (solutions, emotions)
While these can be conducted in any context and for any product, my examples tend to refer to health tech as that’s where I spend most of my professional time and where my passion lies.
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Plan: Prepare to gain empathy in the context of a population.
In order to target and communicate your goals effectively, you’ll need to reflect on the following topics and gather your answers into a working plan. This working plan will guide your research and activities.
Start by brainstorming unanswered questions.
Given the contours of the problem space that you hope to explore, you’ll want to think through guiding questions that will help you better understand it from those individuals’ perspectives. Typically, I start with a general question brainstorm with stakeholders and co-workers, which can then be grouped and ordered into a more logical sequence.
Any in-person interview starts to reach its limit of utility at 2 hours, and most interviews, given constraints on schedules, can only last for one. After the brainstorm is complete, I use these time constraints to find the most important questions that need to be answered in-person and set aside the rest for more traditional research approaches.
Determine the best place to ask these questions (home, workplace).
The best place to ask these questions is in context of the most relevant answers. For an interviewee, that’s often a workplace setting or a home setting, where questions about workflows or lifeflows, respectively, can be answered. Do not take a generic conference room or dining table context as good enough if it doesn’t help you answer your questions.
These contexts are also important because a participant will feel comfortable and familiar within them. They are thus more likely to relax and share more readily there if the interview is sequenced appropriately.
Identify observable workflows or life flows that can confirm and provide nuance to interview answers.
Talking can only get you so far — observation of actual behaviors and situations helps provide much needed context. In the case of a patient managing their weight, observing and talking with him as he weights himself on a scale might provide insight into how that individual prepares, takes action, and reflects on the information provided. A similar approach can be used for any specific device or medication that a patient may be asked to take. Typically, observation results in appreciation for how that individual thinks, feels, and behaves. I also tend to uncover novel workarounds that can ultimately inform my approach to solution design.
Sequence: Specific techniques that create a rich interview.
Empathy building is like a dialogue; you can’t start off with probing a stranger’s deep-seated emotions and perspectives until trust is built. As such, interviews should be structured to begin with the least personal questions and end with the most. Interviews also have momentum that can be won and lost, and conscious effort should be put towards a structure that builds momentum towards the more difficult, open ended questions. Based on a one hour interview, here’s a template for how I level up to unlock more personal and honest answers about behavior and emotions.
Start with basic questions, be transparent, and build rapport (15 minutes)
· Say hello, and smile.
· Indicate the reason for the meeting and goals for the session.
· Set ground rules.
· Describe the contours of the session.
· Gain consent for any recording, and indicate why it’s necessary.
· Ask non-threatening, background questions to orient and relax the participant.
Workflow or Life flow Show and Tell (15–30 minutes)
Depending on your research context and questions you need to answer, seeing how an individual completes a life flow or workflow will likely provide a mechanism to gather answers as indicated above. Show and tell also tends to get both you and your participant up and moving, which will raise the energy of the discussion. While observation may seem awkward to the participant up front, most typically make this transition quickly once they are reinforced that they are displaying competence.
· Explain a transition is taking place to show and tell
· Reinforce that the participant is the expert
· Have them show and tell the particular life-flow or workflow
· Ask what they like or dislike about this life-flow or workflow
At some point, you will notice a transition to anecdotes and more informal knowledge sharing that signifies the ability to ask further probing questions. Prepare yourself to be surprised: before you ask why, make a note of your assumptions.
Ask about stories and emotions (15–30 minutes)
Through the completion of a workflow or life flow, an individual connects to a tableau of other experiences and stories that they can then relate. She becomes primed to answer questions related to nuances of that process, particularly one with many steps, that might not have been answered effectively without a recent refresher.
Stories are easily shared, remembered, and make larger points about perspectives that complement actions and earlier perspectives. They start to help us understand why the person feels the way they do, based on recounting of relevant experiences.
· Prime to reflect: ask questions about how this is the same or different from past experiences
· Ask about the first time something happened if it seems relevant
· Ask for a story or stories that explain emotions related to the experience
· Prime: Ask what they wish was different
· Prime: Ask if this could be like [any product or service] what would it be like? Why?
Follow-up techniques that get at ideal state: desires and emotions.
Deep reflection on the current state opens the door to a natural follow that’s gold for product and service designers: a desired future state. I can’t answer the appropriate order or set of the following activities, as it depends on the context, the individual, and the time remaining. This stage is most closely associated with an art form in that the answer is based ones’ instincts of what is left to draw out. At root, what would be most valued by the participant in both a functional and emotional future state?
Word and Image Associations (15–30 minutes)
Humans are much better at recognizing things previously experienced than recalling them from memory. In essence, instead of asking a broadly open-ended question, “how could this be better?” it’s easier to show prompts where someone can evaluate “would this be better?” This is the theory behind word and image associations. In order to conduct this activity, I collect a broad set of inspiration that covers words and images (people, places, things) that a participant can sort through to indicate what represents aspects of the ideal goal. I give the participant time to do so silently, and then discuss what they connect with emotionally or functionally, and why.
· Consider these words and select the ones that seem to represent an ideal state. We’ll review why shortly.
· Consider these images and select the ones that seem to represent an ideal state. We’ll review why shortly.
Timelines (15–30 minutes)
Timeline activities are great for assessing participant experiences that happen over longer timeframes. Similar to the last activity, start with recognition over recall. For example, if we are curious about how much a participant has engaged with a product over the last week, a simple subjective line graph can suffice. From there, we can layer on problem moments perhaps already discussed, and then start identifying time or location based opportunities for improvement using dots, stars, or other marks that seem more playful and less intimidating. We may be able to draw the participant’s ideal level of engagement once these lower level marks are completed. Future state timelines can be created, but usually require similar recognition over recall prep. For example, we may be interested in what goals a participant would like to achieve over time. First, I would encourage the user to write and brainstorm those before sequencing them on a timeline or probing around what must change in order for these to occur.
· Draw start and end points on the timeline, and we’ll talk about why these are representative.
· If happy is above the line and sad is below the line, draw a curve between these points.
· Draw [shape] to indicate a moment where things frustrated you.
· Draw [shape] to indicate a moment where things delighted you.
· Draw [shape] to indicate an aspect that you wish was different.
Solution building (15–30 minutes)
Solution building activities are invaluable once contours of the solution are known. If constraints are less well established, a word and image association activity may be a better use of time. With that said, solution building gives form to an abstract idea and helps make a connection between the desired interface and user goals. For example, if we know the solution will likely have dashboard related components to oversee a patient population, providing a participant with low fidelity dashboard widgets can help identify the types of visuals and functions that participant needs. A key to remember is that these type of activities provide clarification around requirements, but do not need to be taken literally.
· You initially stated that your ideal solution would be like [product or service]
· Consider the following UI component cut-outs, and place the most helpful ones on this blank canvas so we can discuss why
· Add a [color] sticker to the components that will help you be [adjective] (max x3)
· Add a [smiley] sticker to the aspects or groups of components that will help you feel [feeling]
Magic questions (5 minutes)
Magic questions are designed to be playful and acknowledge that constraints exist — but ask the participant to consider a) what if they didn’t? and b) if they were in total control, what they would build or do? and C) how would it make them feel? These light-hearted questions generate a vast array of insightful commentary that you can’t usually anticipate the answer to. I would hypothesize this is because logical or functional needs may tend to be more well established, and while emotional needs are often logical in a sense, they can also be tangentially linked to past experiences and identity. These questions almost always get at unmet needs or desires of the participants in question, which lead directly to how individuals wished things would be that we can capitalize on as we move towards solution ideation.
· If you had a magic ball and could see into the future, what would you most want to know?
· If you had a magic wand, and could change [x] things, what would you change and why?
· If you were king or queen for a day, what process would you change and why?
Close: Return your participant back to reality
Many interviewees I’ve had the luck to meet compare this process to that of something between therapy and kindergarten. That means we probably did our job right, insofar as we got them to play a bit and ask themselves “what if”? With that being said, it’s important to help them back down from what can be an intense and vulnerable conversation.
· Tell your participant how thankful you are for their time
· Share what already seems valuable or sticks out in your mind (honor them)
· Transition by reiterating how you will utilize the interview and related documentation of images, video, and physical artifacts
· Provide a card so if anything else comes up, they can share
· Depart!
Next step: Start your synthesis
You should be able to identify core needs that your population has — and goals they are looking to accomplish and why — after 6–8 interviews. These goals will amount to a combination of functional and aspirational requirements that you can use to define your future product or service. In my next post, I will address how.
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Thanks for reading. Questions? Shout!
