introduction to agileux: fundamentals of customer research

Will Evans@semanticwill

Yana Kuchirko@mslogophiliac

04/07/23 Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko 2

“Insight about customer behavior and work patterns were never discovered sitting at your fucking desk.”

Why Customer Research



The tendency, especially in design and product development processes, to believe everyone uses digital technologies exactly like you do.

Andres Glusman

“Customers are terrible at articulating what they do. When asked what they do, people give their impression of what they do—which is usually horseshit”


AgileUX Customer Research Specific Context:

Specific Users:

Specific Goals:

04/07/23 6

Types of AgileUX Customer Research

04/07/23 7

04/07/23 8

What is contextual inquiry?

04/07/23 10

~ Beyer & Holtzblatt

Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

04/07/23 11

Every ideation and design cycle should start with a contextual inquiry into the full experience of a customer and his/her.

In AgilexUX, a regular cadence of lightweight research constantly cycled back into the scrum team allows for rapid validation of ideas.

Contextual inquiry clarifies and focuses the problems a customer is experiencing by discovering the


04/07/23 12Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

Before starting contextual inquiry process, you should establish rapport with your user since you’ll have to watch him/her working as “naturally” as possible

Establishing expectations of roles is crucial to gathering rich, unbiased data.

Inquiry process should be driven by the participant’s work rather than interviewer’s questions

Get to know your user


Customer-Researcher Relationship Types

04/07/23 14

Master/apprenticeThe customer is a master from whom you will be learning the trade

PartnershipInterviewer partners with customer to extract details of his/her work

Interviewer/intervieweeInterviewee responds to specific questions asked by the interviewer (entails hierarchy)

Expert/noviceCustomer is an expert in his domain, and shares this experience with the researcher/novice (entails hierarchy)

GuestResearcher’s comfort is the central focus of the inquiry

(entails hierarchy)

Suggested roles

Roles to avoid


Inquiry Process: Introduction & Warm-Up

04/07/23 15

Set up expectations for the observation

Emphasize your role as an “observer” and “learner”

Ask general questions about the participant

What is a typical day like for you?What kinds of tasks do you do regularly?What are some occasional tasks?Where does today’s task fit in the day?What are common roadblocks?

(master vs apprentice)


Inquiry Process: Main Observation

04/07/23 17

Observe the participantsWhat are they doing?What tools are they using?How are they using the tools?Have they developed any work-arounds?

Occasionally ask for the participant to describe what they are doing, providing any necessary explanations, clarifications, walk-through of actions.

Take copious notes. Video record, if possible.


Inquiry Process: Follow-Up & Wrap-Up

04/07/23 18

Follow-UpAfter the main observations, ask the participant any follow-up questions you may have regarding your observation which his/her memory is still fresh.

Wrap-UpAsk the participant about his/her experience and perspective on the inquiry process•Was anything anxiety provoking?•Was there anything you would like to have been done differently?


Inquiry Results: What to collect

04/07/23 19

What tools do participants use?Formal tools? Informal tools? What brands?

Behavior sequencesOrder of actions is important to understanding how the participants think about the task

Methods of organizationHow do the participants organize the information they use? (out of necessity, convenience, importance?)

What kinds of interactions do participants have?What are the important parties in the transfer of knowledge? Are they people? Are they processes? Is the information shared? What is the nature of the interaction?

Collect ArtifactsArtifacts are the non-digital tools people use to help them accomplish the tasks they’re trying to do. (ex: if you are interested in learning how people schedule their events, photograph their daily calendar)


20

“The output from customer research is not a neat hierarchy;

rather, it is narratives of successes and breakdowns, examples of use that entail context, and messy use

artifacts” Dave Hendry


Research Analysis

04/07/23 21

What are people’s values?People are driven by their social and cultural contexts as much as their rational decision making processes.

What are the mental models people build?When the operation of a process isn’t apparent, people create their own models of it

What are the tools people use?It is important to know what tools people use since you are building new tools to replace the current ones.

What terminology do people use to describe what they do?

Words reveal aspects of people’s mental models and thought processes

What methods do people use?Flow is work is crucial to understanding what people’s needs are and where existing tools are failing them.

What are people’s goals?Understanding why people perform certain actions reveals an underlying structure of their work that they may not be aware of themselves. Will Evans & Yana Kuchirko

04/07/23 Will Evans | Manager, User Experience Design 22

“People from different teams engaged in affinity diagramming is as valuable as tequila shots and karaoke. Everyone develops a shared understanding of customer needs, without the hangover or walk of shame”


Research Analysis: Affinity Diagrams

04/07/23 23

Creates a hierarchy of all observations, clustering them into themes.

From the video observations, 50-100 singular observations are written on post-its

(observations ranging from tools, sequences, interactions, work-arounds, mental models, etc)

With entire team, notes are categorized by relations into themes and trends.


Thanks!

introduction to agileux: fundamentals of customer research

Technology