UX14 - Whatsapp Diaries – User Research In A Mobile, Connected, Bite-sized World (Neelam Shetye)

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.’
The opening line of the Dickens classic best sums up the last few years. The way we communicate, connect, create and consume has turned on its head in the last decade or so. Now everyone moves, everything is connected, a digital murmur somewhere in Africa causes a revolution in Asia. Things are getting smaller, human networks bigger. Interfaces, well, are almost disappearing!

It is the best of times – because of the world of immense possibilities that it opens up.
It is the worst of times – because none of the old rules seem to apply anymore for anything!

New UX Design paradigms are emerging every day, evolving and getting mainstreamed fairly quickly. User Research though is still largely a world of interviews, deep-dives, lab enquiries and reports.

This session will not provide any hard-baked solution, but will be an enquiry and exploration into what User Research needs to be like for this new mobile, connected world. Sharing own experiences about new ways of discovering, communicating, creating and assessing value for users and customers, it will be an attempt to put together a working sketch for User Research 2.0.

Transcript

1. Whatsapp Diaries user research in a mobile, connected, bite-sized world
2. Engineer + Designer + User Researcher = Mom
3. What is going to excite him? What is going to get and hold his attention? (just long enough for me to feed him/finish my work) What is going to make him smile? What is going to make him behave the way I want him to?
4. different context same questions
5. Driving Value through Customer Experience
6. Driving Value through Customer Experience
7. Customer 1.  A person or organization that buys goods or services from a store or business 2.  A person or thing of a specified kind that one has to deal with
8. Customer = User ?
9. I buy diapers, toys and books for my son A company buys SAP software You gift a music player to your friend on her birthday
10. Value for Whom?
11. What you tell them (how to sell to them) What is your product/service/experience?
12. Customer User Feedback Influence Supply
13. User Customer Sweet Spot
14. It’s still about their Stories!
15. No excuse good enough… …to not talk to your users! …err, well, almost!
16. Love thy users… But love thy customers too! The tight rope walk
17. What they say they do… …is most likely not what they actually do!
18. The Yellow Walkman story
19. Look. Ask. Listen. Infer.
20. - Customer vs. User - Know and love them both! - Get their story - Look, Ask, Listen and Infer - Find the value ‘sweet spot’… …because it affects not just what you say but also what you make! quick recap…
21. Discover Communicate Create Assess DRIVING VALUE The Value Wheel
22. Discover Communicate Create Assess DRIVING VALUE The Value Wheel EVALUATIVE GENERATIVE
23. User research in a mobile, connected, bite-sized world. WHAT’S CHANGING?
24. Discover. Communicate. Create. Assess.
25. Look. Ask. Listen. Infer.
27. From ‘long and spaced’… …to ‘short and ongoing’
28. Everyone moves. Everything moves. towards a mobile world
29. Shrinking ‘6 degrees of separation’ towards a connected, networked, world
30. from ‘man with a mission’ to ‘groups with a purpose’
31. social butterfly effect expanding, colliding circles of influence
32. How does that change things for user research?
33. 1. Use the mobile to know people and their worlds: both actively (as a tool to capture)…
34. Blend it into their normal scheme of things -short and crisp -simple yet effective -unobtrusive
36. Narrative Clip
38. …and passively (as a resource/channel of data collection)
39. The challenge How do you see what they are seeing and doing?
40. 2. Access to communities of practice
41. 3. Consider multiple perspectives - groups, connections, interests and influencers Where one experience tapers off…another one begins! Experiences with components that stretch over time and space
42. Think of the journey even if it is a product!
43. Be flexible. Mix-media research approach. http://mypatientstory.tumblr.com/
45. Discover. Communicate. Create. Assess.
46. Reports. When was the last time you read one?
47. It’s still about their Stories!
48. make it visual. keep it short. keep it interesting.
53. communicate it back to the people. Feedback Influence
54. Discover. Communicate. Create. Assess.
55. small tight multi-disciplinary teams spread out over time and space co-creation with customers/users iterative, agile
56. When the chaos of creation strikes, hold on to the value!
59. create value together…
60. …make it fun
61. Discover. Communicate. Create. Assess.
63. remote validation and testing
64. Crowd sourced validation and assessment
65. moving from usability to experience. How do you test an experience?
68. Hack it! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVjOMP7ziKA
69. Do it the lean way. ‘Pretotype’ it.
70. Be creative. Be exciting.
71. Any bite-sized questions? Thanks! Neelam Shetye | pg.neelam@gmail.com