#user study

Day 1 of Google Venture’s 5 days design sprint.

This day’s purpose is to build common understandings of the stakeholders envolved in the sprint, to let everyone has a chance to think like a beginner, and make the direction of the sprint clear.

Have a facilitator.

Exercises could be done (can omit some if unnecessary):

Business opportunities (CEO or product leader walk the team through business opportunities and market), Lightning demos (competitors, products with similar features), Lay it out (walk through important screens), Success metrics (How will you measure success?), Existing research (go over existing user research), Team interviews (including engineering or sales or customer service), Analytics (look at the data you have, like Google analytics data).

Gather data before the sprint is a good idea not to make the sprint overwhelming.

Then, sketch the most important user story. Draw them on the board and decide which one is most important.

How do you know which user story is most important? It depends on the problem you are solving in the sprint. For example:

Helping people understand and get started with your product — you probably want to focus on the experience of a user encountering your product for the first time.

Creating a new product concept — you probably want to look into the future and imagine the value proposition and core features for an engaged user.

Improving conversion rate from a landing page — you probably want to understand why people land on your page and what their goals are.

Finally, after all of these user studies,

choose which ideas to move forward

Between October and December 2015, we run 9 game sessions involving both students at the University of Bath and visitors at Dyrham Park.

What is the task?

Does the experiment really address the intended problem?

Are the control conditions appropriate?

Does the experiment actually test the stated hypothesis?

Are the results significant?

Are there possible confounding variables?

User Testing is not you testing the users. It's the users testing you. 

Our responsibility as designers is to check our designs in the realistic, practical scenarios they are were designed for.

Web designers get real users to try out new ideas.

Car designers get people to sit in the car and test drive it.

Underwear designers put real asses in those things!

But user testing is not testing whether the users get it right, or if the crash test dummies die the right way, or if your ass does the wrong things.

It's about the design.

Your job is to find patterns among the users that help you improve your design. Not to get results that make you happy.

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There is a lot of advice out there about exactly how to do a user test, but I think your mental approach is more important than your procedure.

5 things to keep in mind:

1) Are you scoring them, or observing them?

You may come across people giving advice about how to "score" your users. That sounds an awful lot like testing the users to me. And that's not what user testing is about.

Your mission as the tester is to find weaknesses and problems in your own design. Whether the user gets a "good score" isn't important. Watch how they do a task. Listen to what they say or ask. If they complete the task in a way you didn't expect, that's interesting, not wrong. Investigate.

If you develop a "scoring" system as a way to compare results, that's fine. Maybe even good. But score the design, not the users.

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2) Are you watching to see where they make mistakes, or where you have mislead them?

Users can't make mistakes in a user test. It's impossible. They are only doing what you have lead them to do, based on assumptions you have allowed them make.

You should be looking for your own assumptions instead. If you have assumed what the users assume, they will do what you expect. But everywhere you have assumed something incorrectly, they will deviate from your plan.

Don't blame them for screwing up your perfect plan. Realize your plan isn't perfect, and get back to work.

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3) Have you given them tasks to try, or procedures to fail?

Most user testing involves some sort of task or objective for the user. Stuff like "You are trying to buy a cozy new prison facility. Find one you like and add it to your cart." In most tests, the instructions won't be too much more complicated than that.

However, the expectations in your head can be much more complicated.

If you are watching to see if they follow the steps you expect, you're doing it wrong. You should be watching to see how they complete the task. After all, you didn't give them steps to complete (and you shouldn't), you gave them a goal.

If they don't complete the task, your design is hard to use. If they complete it in a "weird" way, take a lot of notes and ask a lot of questions. 

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4) Are you asking them a question, or leading them to an answer?

It can be very tempting to look at a user test as a "win/lose" situation for yourself. You want users to do certain things in a certain way, because it would mean your design is awesome.

Don't do it.

Having a "preferred result" in your mind will make you ask questions in a way that is more likely to get that result. You will investigate things that agree and ignore things that disagree, or — if you're an idiot — you might even try to nudge them toward the result you want.

The only result you want is the truth. It doesn't matter if they love your design or hate it. In fact, if users love your design that isn't very useful, because it doesn't tell you how to improve anything.

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5) Are you waiting for a particular result, or observing what happens?

Some tests are aimed at completing a task. Some are aimed at certain types of actions. If you observe a test just to see if the user completes a task or clicks a button, you have missed most of the value in the test.

Just because a user completes the task eventually, doesn't mean the experience was good.

Bad testers will ignore the actions or comments along the way, but as soon as the user says the magic words, they light up, check the box, and move on to the next question/task.

A good way to know if you are making this mistake is to read your testing notes. Do they say "1) Completed task, 2) Completed task, 3) Didn't complete task..."?

If you do this, you're missing the point.

But moreover, if the user can see you do this — now we're talking about your body language — they will quickly learn which types of answers make you happy and which don't. Every other thought they have will be hidden from you, because they don't think it's "right".

And yes, they will do that even if you say "There are no right or wrong answers." And that's your fault, not theirs. 

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Scientific theories are a matter of constructing models through experimentation, which then predict future experimental results. By this definition, UX is a science, not an art. That's why good UX people can improve specific details on purpose, and non-UX people are just guessing.

Something that is often overlooked by companies and designers alike is that every time you use a UX process to design something, you should get results of some kind.

Those results tell you what worked and what didn't.

By scouring the web you will also find hundreds of other examples of things working and not working. A/B tests. Eye tracking. Conversion rates. Analytics.

Add those to your mental toolkit.

But we should not take these as definitive answers. The fact that a red link won an A/B test in one case, doesn't mean it will win in all cases. When you find a case of a blue link or a white link winning another A/B test you must update your model to explain that.

Results are clues about a larger model of the way people interact with things, and the more of the model you understand, the more you can predict the way people will interact with new things in the future. Things you've never seen before.

That's the point of the UX profession: to design smarter things.

Now, at this point it is important to state that this model does not live in your intuition. You are not the model. Your intuition is what the model should replace.

Common Sense is not a model. It is the absence of a model.

If you make UX decisions by having a meeting with your colleagues, you're not doing science. You're doing opinions.

To do science you must follow the scientific method. Develop a hypothesis. Research and design an experiment (your solution). Run the experiment (launch). Measure it. Interpret the data to see what worked at what didn't.

Then repeat.

You will notice that this idea is very different from a "creative process". There is no phase where you look for inspiration on the internet. There is no phase where you gather reference images and put together a mood board or develop a creative concept.

That's because UX is not art. It's science. You're trying to achieve control of your variables, and predictability of your results. You're trying to eliminate the effects of randomness and chance. You're being diagnostic, so when you fail, you have more information to use in your next try.

Eventually, your results will get more predictable, because your model and your hypotheses and your research will become more sophisticated. Your experiments will turn out the way you predicted more often than not, and when they don't, you'll know why.

That doesn't mean you stop doing experiments and getting results! It just means you'll get what you expect more often.

But the important thing about predictions is that you have to state the prediction before the test. If you merely say "I knew it!" after you know the answer, you might as well pull out the Tarot cards.

In addition to surveys, I've been talking to as many people as I can in order to ascertain usage habits, popular applications and so forth. 

This is proving extremely useful at this stage of my project, providing insight into how your everyday consumer perceives the different tools they interact with on a day to day basis. 

I've spoken to about 10 people so far, and the same trend keeps popping up - I ask them which applications they use most often, and travel is a key category. At the very end of the interview I ask a deilberately biased question: "Which of your applications have a location based feature?" It seems to throw people, and they miss out many of the obvious examples like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare and Eventbrite. 

Organic Food for Pregnant Women 

•The one thing that I notice during user study is that organic food becomes much more of a priority when pregnant women and children come into the picture.

•For many people out there who are completely new to this area and don’t know where to begin, these service  are provide Organic Food Tips for Pregnant Women and New Mothers.

•Pregnant Women have special food requirements.

•Doctor suggests meal planner and gives diet plan chart.

•These female don’t mind spending extra during these months for the sake of the baby.

•Also they don’t have any particular service to help them through it so they end up spending a lot.

•The diet and nutrition plan is designed for only pregnant women and it contains a lot of organic food.

Response from User 

The analysis shown below is from the answers obtained by mother.

  •We buy mostly organic. Especially meat and fruit/veggies.

•I shop at Whole Foods every week, and spend about lot of money a week including lots of organic veggies and fruit.

•I personally cannot afford whole foods but there a couple of natural foods in the metro area that I love and I try to get organic versions of the "dirtiest" food like the ones doctor mentioned , but we still buy commercial items that are not organic (detergent, cleaning supplies and stuff like that) but we make an effort on our food, and hopefully it would make a difference in our lives.

•I buy probably 85% organic meats, dairy and produce. It does cost more but I figure you either pay now for healthy food, or pay later in medical bills.

Why

If pregnant women does not eat properly or eat chemical, pesticide food then she might face following problems :

•Miscarriage

•Not proper growth and development of baby

•Baby brain not develop

•Abnormal baby

•Anemia

•Pre-term deliveries

•low birth-weight

Why Organic Food for Pregnant Women?

•The food that the mother eats will go directly into the fetus and plays a major role in the health of the child.

•Eating a healthy diet during pregnancy is one of the best things Pregnant women can do for themselves and their baby. After all, the food ate by pregnant women is baby's main source of nutrition.

•Eating healthily is especially important during pregnancy because the proper growth and development of  baby depends on food ate by mother that contain enough nutrients for both their needs and those of their baby. Not getting enough of some nutrients or getting too much of other nutrients could cause birth defects in the baby.

Needs

•Users want healthy, fresh and chemical as well as pesticide free food.

•Pregnant women's want to follow diet give by their Doctor, meal plan chart but these female don’t have enough time.

•These female don’t mind spending extra during these months for the sake of the baby.

•Also they don’t have any particular service to help them through it so they end up spending a lot.

•Pregnant women are not able to follow chart completely because Organic food product are not easily available.