Remote Contextual Inquiries
This week’s project consists on an individual challenge in which we have been asked to de develop a B2B SaaS platform in order to improve the work of employees at a company or get their work done in a more efficient way.
During the weekend, we read an article about a research process used and this what I learnt:
One of the best research practices done in UX, especially during the pandemic, is remote Contextual Inquiries used “to fill the research gap between data collected during remote usability testing and on-site contextual inquiries with end users.” By capturing the computer screen of a person working with their version of the software on their own computer. Yet, without giving any instructions or tasks, while a user is interacting with a software and only observing how he interacts with it, unlike other research methods such as Usability Testing where the user is asked to do specific tasks. This technique provides an opportunity to view exactly what our end users see – their version of the software, customizations, feature access, personalizations, and the actions they actually perform to accomplish their goals. Thus, been really helpful to distinguish different problems that the user could deal with on parts that we wouldn’t imagine and so, helping to see if there are unnecessary features or features that could be added to improve the user experience.
3 main steps are needed for this process:
Identify the users: ideally 6 people
Conduct visits: where the idea is to observe the user's behaviour with the software
Analyze data in order to see what are the user needs to be improved within the software
When it comes to my project I will try to conduct remote contextual inquiries as early as possible, to be able to identify any kind of problem in terms of navigation, user flow, information architecture and content strategies.