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dscout.com 1 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers Whether you’re be

dscout.com 1 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers Whether you’re beginning a new job, position, or project— here are a few fundamental “to-do”s to mark done ASAP. dscout.com 2 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers I recently started as the first, and only, user researcher at a wonderful startup based in Berlin. It wasn’t my first role in user research, nor was it my first coming in as the sole user researcher. So, while I had the normal pre-jitters associated with starting a new position, I still felt confident. I had a small list of items I really wanted to accomplish in the first three months, and left the rest up to experience and memory. I had never really made a “get ting started checklist” for any of my past roles, so why should this be different? Now, three months later, I certainly wish I had this list in front of me when I started. It would’ve provided some much-needed focus and guidance as I parsed through some unanticipated roadblocks. Amongst the hurdles: dealing with GDPR, working with a newly formed scrum team, and setting up an annual budget (without knowing much about the overall company budget). Needless to say, I got sidetracked from my normal routine, and found myself a little lost. I was thrown directly into new teams, and I didn’t have the time to properly talk to the people I needed to talk to, or get the clarity I needed to hit the ground running. So I put together a checklist to help others when starting a new user research Nikki Anderson @Nikki_Anderson on Medium dscout.com 3 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers Your First Two Weeks 1. Know the industry ins and outs. Take the time to develop a deep understanding of the industry by researching market trends, competitors and field-specific jargon. This will put you in a good place to understand where your product fits, and how it could improve in the space. It should also improve your capacity to understand research participants and project stakeholders down the line. If you’re not sure where to start: downloading Forrester’s industry reports or taking a look at Crunchbase should make for a good jumping-off point. If you have the time, and really want to understand the industry, you could conduct (or push the strategy team to conduct) a full SWOT analysis. 2. Do walkthroughs of the product by yourself and with other team members. Within the first two weeks, record yourself walking through the product, noting anything that doesn’t currently make sense. Treat this almost like a loose heuristic evaluation. Pro Tip: This is often a task worth taking on with other team members. It’s a great way to meet your colleagues, enrich your knowledge, and introduce them to your new role. 3. Make time to meet with the people you’ll be working with most frequently—including stakeholders across other departments. Sitting down to talk with your legal team might not be the first thing on your to-do list. But if you’ll have new data management or GDPR rules to fall in line with—it’ll make sure you’re tackling those roadblocks from the get-go. We recommend talking to: Each of the following departments will either interact with your research processes or research data. Knowing the needs they have, the resources at their disposal, and their existing perspectives and biases can be instrumental to starting effective research. + + Manager/Upper management + + Designers + + Developers + + Product owners/Team leads + + Legal + + Customer support/Success + + Sales + + Marketing + + Data science/Analysts dscout.com 4 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers Treat your first month or so as your own research project by “interviewing” individuals around the company. Get to know their needs, challenges, goals, and frustrations. While it might feel slow at first, this will give you insight into how things get done, the ability to tailor and communicate your findings effectively, and most importantly, establish relationships early. Autumn Schultz Director of User Experience, Mac & Mia 4. Set your own user research OKRs. Towards the end of the two weeks, after having spoken with as many internal stakeholders as possible, start writing your own user research objective key results (OKRs). These should focus on what you would like to accomplish in the first three months. For example: conducting a certain number of research sessions, cre ating the first set of personas, developing initial customer journey maps, or helping support teams reach their goals. 5. Review any previous user research. If any user research has been done in the past, pour through it. There could be really important insights that were previously overlooked, or great places for you to start with as you embark on your user research journey. If you want to jump into research more effectively, go find out what research has already been done. It may be archived well, or, more likely, it’s inconsistently documented in a number of different storage systems. Familiarize yourself with what’s there - even if you aren’t able to digest (or understand!) the past work. At least, when a topic comes up, you’ll be able to say: ‘Yes, we have some previous research about that—let me see what we already know before we plan any new research.’ Even if it is perfectly archived, your stakeholders might be unaware without your reminders. It takes human effort to create that tribal knowledge that helps a research team be more efficient and responsive. Steve Portigal Principal, Portigal Consulting dscout.com 5 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers Your First Month 1. Set up a user research framework for the company. This is one of the most difficult areas to get traction on, especially if you’re starting from scratch. A basic blueprint: use a UX maturity matrix to assess the current status, and then talk to internal stakeholders to understand what’s happening now, and how research might fit in. This is especially important when it comes to development cycles. Here are the different points worth assessing: What are the current processes? + + How do development teams work? Agile, sprints, lean, etc. + + What is in each team’s current backlog, and how do they plan? + + What is working well? What needs to be changed? + + How do teams prioritize tasks and projects? Has there been user research in the past? + + How was it done, and how was it used? What was the quality of the research? How will research impact planning and feature development? When joining a team as a new UXR, it’s important to meet with stakeholders, and educate them on your role. Put together a mini-portfolio of your experience and examples of studies, as most non-research stakeholders don’t know what can be accomplished through research. Then set up meetings with each stakeholder to gauge their current wants and unmet needs. This will 1) help you learn about each team’s ‘state of the union,’ and 2) help develop a rapport with each team. Sarah Kennedy Senior UX Researcher, Answerlab 2. Educate the company on user research. Once you’ve met enough with stakeholders to understand the current lay of the land, it’s really important to build an accessible presentation and document on what user research means at that particular company. Personalize the talk to the particular situation the company is in. Within this presentation/document, it’s worth including: + + An introduction to user research, and what the user research process looks like at X company + + What value user research brings to X company dscout.com 6 A Getting Started Checklist for User Researchers + + What are the different methodologies that’ll be used and the value of each method + + How long each method takes (end-to-end) + + What you need from each team + + A one-pager on how to work with a user researcher 3. Set up an annual budget. Even if you’re not creating the annual budget, make sure you’re aware of it and why certain budgeting decisions were made. When creating any user research budget, I always have two versions—one which is more “shoot for the stars” research and one that takes a more lean approach—with the hopes the company will agree to something in between. Planning this, it’s worth thinking about: + + What types of research will be done in the upcoming quarters + + How often the research will be conducted + + Necessary incentives for research participation by methodology + + Different tools needed for each stage of the process + + Surveying, recruitment, feedback (ie. Usabilla, HotJar), repository (ie. Airtable), remote interviewing (ie. dscout), etc. 4. Do a heuristic evaluation and/or competitive analysis. This is probably the only real time you’ll have to do desk research, so do as much as possible. One potential approach: start off with a heuristic evaluation (using Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics), so you can give the product teams some quick feedback before uploads/s1/ dscout-guide.pdf