Sharing your UX Research insights — and growing a knowledge base over time

Part 4 of a 4-step guide on how to gain impactful insights using remote user research

Doing groceries is a part of everyone’s daily life, at Picnic it’s our mission to build a grocery shopping experience which people love to use. To achieve this goal, our User Experience team in Amsterdam is conversing with Picnic users on a weekly basis to uncover their needs and wants, explore design directions and validate assumptions and solutions.

This article is the fourth part of a 4-step guide on how to get you started with setting up a remote user research practice in your organisation. Each piece will be accompanied by hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Use these links to go straight to any of the other parts:

• Part 1 🧰 : Get started with remote user research by preparing your toolkit
• Part 2 👥 : Recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and how to make sure they come prepared
• Part 3 💬 : And we’re live! — Conducting your online UX Research study

Congrats you’ve just finished a round of interviews! Before reading further, make sure to give yourself a pat on the back, get a drink and look at this highly important image of cute otters:

Perfect! Now the time has come to work on the documentation of your research.

Building an insight library

When starting with user research documentation for the first time, think about how you want to grow a knowledge base. At Picnic, we use Confluence across many teams so it felt like the most obvious place to start building up our user research repository in there as well. In the end, it doesn’t really matter which tool you’re using as long as it enables you and your team to easily access all the insights and opportunities collected.

You’ll end up with a single-source-of-truth containing the results of all research activities for every project

I recommend documenting your research activities on a per project basis. This way, you’re able to add the knowledge you gain over time to a single page or document. You’ll end up with a single-source-of-truth containing the results of all research activities for every project. Not only will this help your UX team to always have access to the latest results, but it is also just a lot of fun to sometimes take a look back and see how a certain design has progressed based on the results of user research. Also, it can be quite satisfying to see your library of knowledge grow rapidly and notice how different people within your organisation are able to use it for their own purposes. When people ask you “why did we make it this way?”, you’ll be able to point out why, and where they can find it.

Sticking to an efficient format, both for documenting and reading

When writing down the results of your research study it can be helpful to stick to certain formatting, so your team member can easily find what they’re looking for. Also, it helps to become used to certain formatting so that you become quicker at processing the results each time.

Every piece of documentation I make starts with a small section containing the project’s essentials, such as the title, main stakeholders and important links to Jira boards, Figma files or Miro boards.

Right after, I prefer to directly communicate the main findings and key opportunities. Although you’re probably going to put some effort into careful documentation of your research, most stakeholders don’t take the time it may take to read through it all. Of course, it would be a shame if that means they’re going to skip the most critical part. If one of the insights or opportunities makes them curious, they may be even more encouraged to keep reading on.

👆 This is actually a tip I’ve learned from Amanda Rosenburg’s daily UXR tips on LinkedIn

After listing the insights and opportunities you think everybody should know, make sure to still take notice of the information and feedback you’ve received from each of your participants. While you certainly don’t have to capture exact minutes of the entire sessions, it may be valuable to capture the essence of what people are saying. Personally, I try to structure people’s input into three sections:

1. ✅ Main positive remarks
2. 🚨 Main feedback for improvement
3. 💡 Any additional ideas or food for thought

These three parts provide the reader with a structured summary of the interview with each participant. Feel free to alternate different elements and perspectives. A combination of attitudinal feedback, noted observations and participant quotes results in a dynamic and lively piece which is enjoyable to read.

Letting the people speak for themselves

At this point you’ve already spent quite some time on documenting your research. Still, there’s quite a chance that not all stakeholder have or take the time to read your notes as thoroughly as you would like. How could we really grab their attention and make sure the main insights truly come across?

So far, my answer would be highlight videos. Over the past year, I’ve been creating small videos for every round of interviews, for every project. Looking back, I believe they did their work quite well! Not only do colleagues often approach me to share what they got out of them, the videos also spark a lot of conversations during the meetings where we discuss outcomes of research activities. It’s clearly something colleagues are looking forward to, over and over again.

While making a video requires a bit more work, I would say it’s definitely worth the effort. Also, it isn’t as labour intensive as it used to be. For example with recorded sessions and timestamped notes in Lookback, you’re able to download interesting pieces of your interview in just a couple of minutes.

💡 4 hands-on tips

• Be compliant with GDPR. Just by doing user research, you’re going to collect a lot of very personal information. Make sure to be very critical on which information you’re going to document and which elements are better to leave out. For example, we only document people’s first name and household size. As a rule of thumb, don’t collect any information that is unnecessary for your study and make sure to structurally delete data after a fixed period of time. More on how to fully comply with GDPR can be found here.
• Since your knowledge database is going to grow a lot over time, make sure to control who has access to it. In most online tools this is relatively easy to do. You could think about a core group of people (probably your UX team) who have access to everything and about separate groups who only have access to some parts.
• If you’re planning to use the same format for your documentation for each study, try to make a template out of it. This will speed up your routine every time you start documenting a new study. It’s very satisfying to make the entire structure appear with one click. 😉
• When making a highlight video, make sure to keep it short but sweet. After a round of five 45-minute interviews it’s easy to end up with enough material to make a short movie, but try not too. Aim for a bite-sized video, ideally not any longer than 7 minutes. This way, all stakeholder can easily watch it when having some time to spare.

Make your insights come to life

Even after spending a lot of time documenting your study, your work is not done yet. In order to get the message across, you have to make the insights come to life. Share your documentation on various channels, gather all stakeholders once more and walk through the results together. It’s not until this point that the insights really get to work. By sharing everyone’s own perspective and different take on the outcomes, great solutions spark. The documentation is not your true deliverable, the buzz around it is! ✨

That’s a wrap! If you’ve used this guide, you just went through a complete cycle of remote user research. Preparing, recruiting, informing, conducting, building and sharing, you’ve done it all. I hope you’ve had a lot of fun while doing so. Let’s keep listening and build products people love to use!

One more thing…

Are you interested in building a grocery shopping experience which people love to use? We’re looking for awesome folks to join our UX team in Amsterdam (both designers and researchers)! Feel free to send me a message or visit our website. 🚀

Sharing your UX Research insights — and growing a knowledge base over time was originally published in Life's a Picnic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Part 3 of a 4-step guide on how to gain impactful insights using remote user research

Doing groceries is a part of everyone’s daily life, at Picnic it’s our mission to build a grocery shopping experience which people love to use. To achieve this goal, our User Experience team in Amsterdam is conversing with Picnic users on a weekly basis to uncover their needs and wants, explore design directions and validate assumptions and solutions.

This article is the third part of a 4-step guide on how to get you started with setting up a remote user research practice in your organisation. Each piece will be accompanied by hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Use these links to go straight to any of the other parts:

• Part 1 🧰 : Get started with remote user research by preparing your toolkit
• Part 2 👥 : Recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and how to make sure they come prepared
• Part 4 💡 : Sharing your UX Research insights — and growing a knowledge base over time

Now that all the preparations are done, it’s finally time to start researching. Because of all the work you’ve done before, you shouldn’t have to worry about any of the the logistics.. While I could probably write an entire piece just about conducting user interviews, let’s walk through some quick tips to get started with conducting remote interviews and using Lookback.

Involving the stakeholders

Before starting, make sure to communicate the participant schedule to your colleagues. For project stakeholders, it can be really useful to join (at least some of) the user research activities themselves, so they can already experience a couple of user reactions first-hand. Tools like Lookback make this step easier than ever, allowing colleagues to join a session by clicking a link. Since participants can only see the interviewer, observers can freely jump in and out anytime. It’s like one of those fancy one-way mirrors like they have at expensive UX labs and in detective series! 🕵️‍♂️

For project stakeholders, it can be really useful to join the user research activities themselves, so they can already experience a couple of user reactions first-hand

Doing the interview

One final thing before we actually start. At the beginning of the session, try not to jump straight into research mode. Instead, try to set a welcoming atmosphere, like you would do when meeting in real life. For example, I like to shortly thank the participants for their time and effort joining the session, to introduce myself and to tell more about the purpose of the research. Even when people are in the comfort of their own homes, it’s still very valuable to have a little chitchat and make them feel at ease.

So now it’s time to really start. You can mostly conduct your user interview like you would normally do, except this time you’re empowered by the tools that Lookback has to offer. For example, you can take time-stamped notes, chat with colleagues to see if they have extra questions and precisely see where participants are touching their screens when using a prototype. The combination of all these functionalities makes doing remote user research a joy for anyone who’s empathising with users on a regular basis.

You can take time-stamped notes, chat with colleagues to see if they have extra questions and precisely see where participants are touching their screens when using a prototype

When you’ve covered all topics that are part of your interview, make sure to briefly summarise major findings and key opportunities together with the user. Often, these final reflections gain even deeper insight into what you’re trying to find out. This moment of reflection can also result in insightful and compact video snippets to share with your team later on.

When concluding your interview, make sure to give a final and major shoutout to the participants, to thank them for all their time, effort and input.

💡 4 hands-on tips

• Naturally, people are going to forget about the time or about the interview at all. When someones not arriving in the digital “waiting room” for 3 minutes I like to give them a quick call. Don’t worry, people generally don’t mind the little reminder at all.
• If you’re planning on collecting personal data or recording the research session, make sure to tell your participants upfront. For example, our prototype always starts with a simple digital consent form.
• Marvel and Lookback work great together! If there’s a bug in your prototype, any changes in your Marvel prototype will directly be reflected in your Lookback session. When discovering a simple usability issue in your design, you could even ask the UX designer to make some small changes, so you’re able to test these with the next participant already.
• Loyal users of your product or service are likely to have come up with many ideas on how they think things could be improved. Although you are looking for answers to specific research, always make sure to give participants some room to ventilate their ideas and feel listened to. I like to give people an opportunity for such a “braindump” at the end of every session to make sure it doesn’t interfere with the timing of the rest of the interview. Also, think of a way to effectively communicate this stream of ideas to your team.

The advantages of remote UX Research and why it’s not perfect

Over the past year, I’ve become a great fan of remote user interviewing for a number of reasons. It’s great how remote studies enable researchers to connect with people who could not have joined otherwise. Anyone who got around 40 minutes to spare can already be of great value. Since people are able to join from the comfort of their own homes, while using their own devices the settings quickly feels natural and informative. Also, for the researcher remote studies provide a lot of flexibility, since you can basically work from anywhere and save a lot of travelling time.

Still, I think we’re all looking forward to the moment when we can start alternating remote research with actual in-person studies again. There’s something about face-to-face interactions, which even Lookback can’t replace.

Cheers! By now, you’ve completed a couple of remote interviews, probably gained a lot of insights and eager to share this with the right people. Next up in our series on remote user research is more on how to turn this knowledge into actionable insights, ready to be shared! . Click here to continue reading.

And we’re live!— Conducting your online UX Research study was originally published in Life's a Picnic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and making sure they’re prepared

Part 2 of a 4-step guide on how to gain impactful insights using remote user research

Doing groceries is a part of everyone’s daily life, at Picnic it’s our mission to build a grocery shopping experience which people love to use. To achieve this goal, our User Experience team in Amsterdam is conversing with Picnic users on a weekly basis to uncover their needs and wants, explore design directions and validate assumptions and solutions.

This article is the second part of a 4-step guide on how to get you started with setting up a remote user research practice in your organisation. Each piece will be accompanied by hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Use these links to go straight to any of the other parts:

• Part 1 🧰 : Get started with remote user research by preparing your toolkit
• Part 3 💬 : And we’re live! — Conducting your online UX Research study
• Part 4 💡 : Sharing your UX Research insights — and growing a knowledge base over time

Next up is making sure you’re able to conduct research with some actual participants. You could either make use of your own database of users or partner up with a recruitment agency, but also don’t worry if both options don’t work for you. At Picnic, we still conduct ad-hoc research with friends, family and our partners — and gained some very valuable feedback by doing so. As long as you’re aware of who you’re speaking with and the side-effects, it can work.

Defining your pool of participants

For any research activity, it is essential to think about who you want to reach. Based on the research questions, think about if you need to select people who have a certain level of experience with your product or service, or if they should still be completely new to it. By talking with more experienced people, you can learn more about their current behaviour, based on their past experiences and habits. By talking with people who are new to the product or service, you’re going to learn more about their first impressions and instinctive attitude. Both can be very valuable, but it’s important to understand the difference.

Automating your scheduling and messaging systems

Let’s say you know which people you want to target and you want to start scheduling some first interview. Scheduling can be a tedious process, but luckily this is where a tool like Calendly can make things much easier. In a scheduling tool like this, you’re able to select a specific date and time, set the desired slot time and create a link which people can use to sign-up for any of the slots that are still available. It’s really that simple!

Next to scheduling, it’s very useful to set up some automated messaging with upcoming participants. First of all, set up a confirmation of the test session that is sent directly after booking a certain slot. By receiving this confirmation, people are able to easily add the event to their personal calendar and, if necessary, cancel the event right from their email or calendar. You want to make it easy for people to cancel on time, so the slot becomes available again for other people to book.

Chances are that people don’t have time to read a 5-page PDF, but are happy to receive a simple email with a cheerful introduction and a short 3-step process on how to prepare

Secondly, it’s helpful to give your participants an information email about what they can expect and how they can prepare for the test. Usually, we sent these 24 hours before their actual session. Make sure to keep the amount of information just right. Chances are that people don’t have time to read a 5-page PDF, but are happy to receive a simple email with a cheerful introduction and a short 3-step process on how to prepare. When conducting user interviews via Lookback, for example, we ask them to download the participate app, make sure to use a headset with microphone and be present around 5 minutes before the slot. Try to formulate the specific preparations that fit the need of your test session in an easily digestible email. If people are able to quickly scan it while sitting on the toilet, it’s probably a good email.

Finally, people are still likely to forget about your sessions so make sure to send them a friendly reminder shortly before the session. In our system, we’ve set up a small text message 15 minutes prior to any session.
By using an automatic messaging system like this, you can let most of the work be done for you and be sure that most users are able to magically appear prepared and on time for your test session. 🪄

💡 4 hands-on tips

• If you’re conducting a usability study, you are already going to gain extensive insights by testing with just 5 participants. When testing with more participants, the effectiveness of the research is likely to quickly drop.
• Don’t recruit too far in advance, I would say one week max. Since people are inherently bad at planning, chances are that you are going to receive many cancellations from people who committed too far in advance.
• Make sure to ask for the participant’s phone number when they sign-up. In the case of people forgetting about the session or having trouble getting started, it can be really helpful to give them a quick call.
• If you’re making use of an automated scheduling and communication tool, make sure to set-up a follow-up email after the test session. We have been using these to ask if participants would like to help us out more often by signing up for our user panel.

Why it’s worth the effort

While it may seem like quite some work, once set up this system works like a charm. A well set up remote user research practice will save you a lot of work in the end. Still it’s likely that you’re going to receive some last-minute cancellations. However, because of the research being remote, you can probably continue working on something else in the comfort of your own (home) office.

That’s it! This is how we try to recruit the right people for our research study and make sure they come in prepared. While we’ve developed this process over the last year, still there’s lots to be improved. Also, since working in UXR naturally means being involved with many many people, you will probably still find yourself being on the phone with people trying to troubleshoot all kinds of (technical) issues. I guess that’s also part of the fun right? 😉

Time to go live! Next up in our series on remote user research is more on how to actually conduct your online UX Research study. Click here to continue reading.

Recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and how to make sure they come prepared was originally published in Life's a Picnic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Part 1 of a 4-step guide on how to gain impactful insights using remote user research

This article is the first part of a 4-step guide on how to get you started with setting up a remote user research practice in your organisation. Each piece will be accompanied by hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Use these links to go straight to any of the other parts:

• Part 2 👥 : Recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and how to make sure they come prepared
• Part 3 💬 : And we’re live! — Conducting your online UX Research study
• Part 4 💡 : Sharing your UX Research insights — and growing a knowledge base over time

Doing groceries is a part of everyone’s daily life. At Picnic it’s our mission to build a grocery shopping experience which people love to use. To achieve this goal, our User Experience team in Amsterdam is conversing with Picnic users on a weekly basis to uncover their needs and wants, explore design directions and validate assumptions and solutions.

Switching to remote user research

Over the last year, due to the COVID-19 measures, we have completely revamped our weekly user research rhythm. Originally, we conducted in-person user research studies with customers on a weekly basis — both in our office as well as at locations spread around the country. As we all know, that way of working suddenly became impossible. In order to maintain our research cadence and keep supporting teams with user insights, we certainly had to adapt. And so we did! In a couple of weeks, we were able to pick back up our regular pace — maybe even a bit faster.

It works remarkably well that people are able to tune in to any research activity from wherever they are while using their own personal devices

Conducting remote user research has proven to be extremely valuable in our day-to-day operation. It works remarkably well that people are able to tune in to any research activity from wherever they are while using their own personal devices.

Also, it saves both the participants and the researchers lots of travelling time and costs. At the same time, it’s fair to say that part of the fun and social connection might get lost while both sitting behind screens. When the situation allows for it, we’re likely to start alternating our remote research operations with in-person studies.

In the end, remote research is definitely here to stay. In this series of articles, we will tell you more about how we’ve set up our remote user research practice, share the lessons we’ve learned while getting to where we are now and provide you with some practical tips to get started.

Getting started yourself

To make things easy, we’ve split this guide into four bite-sized articles full of actionable insights and tips which you can use to set up your own remote user research practice. Each piece will be accompanied by a couple of hands-on tips, that we’ve learned along the way at Picnic. Let’s go!

ℹ️ While there are many remote user research methods out there, this guide will specifically focus on conducting remote user interviews. Still, you can apply many of the same tips and tricks when you’re setting up another remote research activity. More about when to use which UX Research method can be found here.

Part 1: Preparing your toolkit

Like with anything, a good start is half the battle. Right now there are many tools out there which can help out during different phases of the user research process. Over the last year, we’ve been trying out a bunch of them and discovered a way of working that supports our needs best. The following tools are all part of our current research toolkit and have proven to be real live-savers.

Designing: Figma
This one is probably quite a no-brainer. Figma is the go-to tool for our entire design team and therefore, a vital touchpoint for the user research team as well. Because of its collaborative nature, it’s extremely easy to take a look at new designs, discuss opportunities — and most importantly come up with the right research questions in direct collaboration with the UX designers. For more on how we use Figma, take a look at Wiemer’s article.

Prototyping: Marvel
After deciding on what to test, we prepare a prototype in Marvel. These prototypes are usually rather limited, covering the elements which we would like to test and not much more. While there are many great prototyping tools out there, Marvel seems to strike the right balance between features and speed. Other tools, like Principle and ProtoPie, might be more powerful and able to let you create beautiful animations and other eye-candy. However, we kept coming back to Marvel since it’s extremely easy to import your screens directly from Figma, link them together and share a link which people can use for quick access to the interactive prototype from any device.

Recruiting: Your own database, TestingTime
From a participant recruitment perspective, we’re relatively lucky. At Picnic, we have our own database full of people using our app, who are mostly very happy to help us out. When we’re looking participants who are not currently using the Picnic app or living in places where we don’t deliver yet we collaborate with our recruitment partner TestingTime. They have been able to help recruit test participant at incredible speed — up to 48 hours in advance. Also, their panel reaches all over Europe.

Scheduling: Calendly
Calendly has proven to be a real time-saver when it coming to manage participant scheduling. Unless you’re very happy to send tons of invitations, confirmation and reminder emails, let this tool do it for you. While it’s certainly not the simplest tool of all, it has all features to make sure it fits the specific needs of any research study imaginable.

Forget about carrying around filming gear, extra batteries and Mr Tappy; with Lookback running on your laptop, you’re ready to go

User testing: Lookback — (Personal favourite by far ❤️)
If you’ve ever conducted a usability study before, you probably recognise the struggle of getting it all right. Forget about carrying around filming gear, extra batteries and Mr Tappy; with Lookback running on your laptop, you’re ready to go. By using this tool we have been able to interview and observe our users while letting them interact with prototypes. Colleagues and project stakeholders are able to join a session, take notes or chat with the researchers. Best of all, all sessions are recorded and you’re able to capture particular moments of interest in highlights which can be shared anywhere.

Documenting: Confluence
At Picnic, many of the teams already use Confluence for their documentation. So for me, it only made sense to make use of the same tool. But actually, over time, I’ve been growing quite fond of it. Because of its simple formatting and strong integrations with other tools, it’s easy to create beautiful and rich documentation pages which look consistent on any platform.

👆 All of these recommendations are purely based on my own experience and are not sponsored whatsoever. For a more complete overview of tools with many alternatives, check Alexis Gerome’s list.

Finding out what’s best for you

While it may seem like a lot, your team is likely to use a number of these tools already, or alternatives to them. Also, compared to the traditional research kit (containing cameras, cables, spare batteries, notebooks) it’s a nice extra that all these tools conveniently fit into your laptop.

Are you on a budget? Then I’ve got some great news! All of the tools mentioned above contain free tiers or trial versions which can definitely get you started on conducting some free rounds of remote research activities, so no more excuses. 😉

That’s it! These are the tools we use at Picnic to arrange our remote user research practice. Since your needs may be a bit different, don’t worry to deviate and combine the tools that suit your situation best. Although it may cost you some time, it’s quite satisfying to have everything up and running smoothly in the end.

Next up in our series on remote user research is more on how to recruiting the right people for your UX Research study — and how to make sure they come prepared. Click here to continue reading.

Get started with remote UX Research by preparing your toolkit was originally published in Life's a Picnic on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.