Discovery and diamonds
As part of my MA in User Experience Design, I completed a module called UX Design.
This blog post was originally published as part of the reflective piece I wrote throughout that module.
I need to create and submit a prototype as part of the assessment for this module so I’ve spent the first few weeks exploring areas to focus on.
Discovery
At this early stage of the project, my focus is discovery. This is one of the four Ds of the double diamond approach to design process, developed by the British Design Council (Ball 2019).
The Discovery stage of the process involves divergent thinking to explore possibilities, generate ideas and uncover problems that could be solved.
I started this part of the process by reading the assessment brief and exploring my initial feelings in response to the brief. There are a few example briefs provided as potential areas of focus for the prototype, all themed around the ‘generosity of every day givers’.
Initial feelings
I’m not proud to say that my initial feelings were quite negative. Since COVID-19, I’ve felt quite cynical towards the idea of charitable giving.
One of the example briefs centred around women’s experiences of philanthropy and giving. Women are said to be more likely to give and give more than men (Mesch et al. 2020). Rather than feeling inspired to design better digital solutions for philanthropic women, it led me to wonder why men don’t give more. I was feeling angry rather than inspired.
Reach for the Sky?
Each year, D&AD run a ‘New Blood’ awards programme which encourages “students, graduates, and aspiring creatives” (‘D&AD New Blood Awards 2023’ 2023) to respond to creative briefs. So when deciding to explore other options, I looked to see if any of their briefs could be used as inspiration for my prototype.
I quite liked the sound of one of the briefs which had been set by Sky. It centred around creating more immersive experiences for their customers, based on existing Sky content.
User research
A key part of the discovery stage of a project is finding out about users (Rosala 2020),(Baxter et al. 2015). So, during the second week of the module, I had a go at conducting some user research. It took on the form of a semi-structured group interview (Denscombe 2017), conducted via Teams with two of my friends who are also studying the same MA course.
Brainstorming questions
Since I was leaning towards the D&AD Sky brief, I had already "identified “the broad problem space” (Fessenden n.d.): Sky customers who want new ways to interact with the TV content they watch. Using this, I brainstormed some possible questions that I might want to ask.
Discussion guide
I then refined and structured those question ideas into a discussion guide (TheRobHayes 2019). In his article, TheRobHayes (2019) recommends beginning with an easy question, designed to help participants feel at ease. So I decided to start by asking about the last time they watched TV.
The same article then goes on to recommends moving “onto questions specific to the learning objectives at hand” and then finishing with “open-ended questions that may be more difficult cognitively for the research participant” (TheRobHayes 2019). I did try to do this. However, I knew that the time I had to conduct this research would be limited. My friends and I had arranged to meet virtually for an hour before the weekly module webinar. This would give me a maximum interview time of 20 minutes, assuming no one else’s interviews overran.
I included ideas for follow-up questions under each of my three main discussion points. However, these were just ideas, reflecting the flexible nature of the semi-structured interview approach (Dencombe 2017).
Interviews
Using the discussion guide I interviewed my friends, Dan and Carie.
Reflection
Having conducted a user research interview, here are my thoughts on how it went.
What went well
There were quite a few positives that I would like to replicate and build upon, such as:
Taking it in turns to interview and be interviewed, enabling us each to experience the process from different perspectives
Conducting semi-structured user research interviews with a small group of people
Having the opportunity to practice writing and asking interview questions and interview in a safe environment, with my friends
In the screenshot below, I’ve shared my perspective on the experience in a Discord conversation.
In response, Carie shared her perspectives on the experience of interviewing and being interviewed.
What could be improved
I wanted to learn about the interview participants’ experiences of watching TV. However there were moments during the conversation when, instead of describing their own experiences, they suggested ways to improve the experience. This could be avoided by:
Practicing and improving my own interview facilitation skills so that I’m better able to steer conversations back to the type of responses I want
Interviewing people who do not have a UX background
I think another way to make sure participants’ responses more closely match what I’m looking for is to refine the questions I ask and the way I ask them. In her article for Nielsen Norman Group, Kara Pernice writes about “dialog-provoking interview questions” (2018). This is something I've tried to do, using my previous experience of creating interview prompts for talking head filmed interviews. However, after reading her article, I can see that “How often do you watch TV?” might have been a better question than asking participants to describe the last thing they watched.
Future plans
When carrying out user research interviews in future, I plan to:
Look for opportunities to repeat the semi-structured small group interview format
Pilot my interview questions by arranging a practice run before any ‘actual’ interviews
Practice my interview question writing skills
Research advice on facilitating interview sessions so that I have a few pointers on how to steer conversations more effectively
At this point in the project, I’m still not feeling very enthused about the potential briefs. Am I expecting too much to want a project that really fires up my imagination and motivation? Should I be trying harder to figure out a way to feel positive and enthused?
Although I had been leaning towards the D&AD Sky brief, I still wasn’t sure whether it was the right direction to go in. Although carrying out the user research with that brief in mind had enabled me to test out a research method, it hadn’t provided any clarity on how I felt about the brief itself.
I’m feeling anxious about my lack of decision-making. Even though it is just the second week of the module and the discovery stage is all about uncovering possibilities, I do want to find at least a broad focus area soon. I don’t want to spend too long deciding and run out of time to create the actual prototype.
I decided that talking through my ideas would be helpful, so I booked in a one-to-one appointment with one of my lecturers. I’ll write about the outcomes of that meeting in my next blog post.
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BALL, Jonathan. 2019. ‘The Double Diamond: A Universally Accepted Depiction of the Design Process’. [online]. Available at: https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/our-work/news-opinion/double-diamond-universally-accepted-depiction-design-process/ [accessed 13 Feb 2023].
BAXTER, Kathy, Catherine COURAGE and Kelly CAINE. 2015. Understanding Your Users: A Practical Guide to User Research Methods. Second edition. Amsterdam Boston Heidelberg: Elsevier, MK, Morgan Kaufmann.
‘D&AD New Blood Awards 2023’. 2023. D&AD [online]. Available at: https://www.dandad.org/en/d-ad-new-blood-awards/ [accessed 13 Feb 2023].
DENSCOMBE, Martyn. 2017. The Good Research Guide: for small-scale social research projects. Sixth edition. London New York, NY: Open University Press (Open UP study skills).
FESSENDEN, Therese. n.d. User Research for Non-Existent Products (Video) [Film]. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/videos/user-research-non-existent-products/ [accessed 14 Feb 2023].
MESCH, Debra et al. 2020. Women Give 2020. Available at: https://scholarworks.iupui.edu/handle/1805/22578 [accessed 14 Feb 2023].
PERNICE, Kara. 2018. ‘User Interviews: How, When, and Why to Conduct Them’. Nielsen Norman Group [online]. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/user-interviews/ [accessed 14 Feb 2023].
ROSALA, Maria. 2020. ‘The Discovery Phase in UX Projects’. Nielsen Norman Group [online]. Available at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/discovery-phase/ [accessed 14 Feb 2023].
THEROBHAYES. 2019. ‘Creating an Effective Discussion Guide for Your User Research’. Getting started with User Research [online]. Available at: https://medium.com/getting-started-with-user-research/creating-an-effective-discussion-guide-for-your-user-research-c566288d4c2e [accessed 14 Feb 2023].
Thank you for reading.
