User research assets: treasure or trash? Slides from the NUX6 talk by Kate Towsey, Friday 27th October 2017. 2017.nuxconf.uk / nuxuk.org Synopsis: Hours of audio and video, photographs, notes, decks, matrices, various types of visual presentations, and even physical assets picked up in the field – and even walls! We make a lot of stuff in doing user research. Are these things potential treasure troves of knowledge for future research? Or are they things that, once used and acted upon, become more complicated to keep than to trash? A couple of years ago, I spent several months researching how the GDS user research team and their colleagues felt about the stuff they made during user research. Off the back of that research, we ran a pilot for an A/V library. Then I wrote a blog post about the research results. Since then, I’ve had many conversations with organisations around the world trying to answer the same question: can we make our research assets useful in the long term? In this talk, I’ll share what I learned at GDS, and what I’ve learned in talking to industry since. It’ll be an open-ended talk, but, I hope, a good starting point for cross-industry knowledge sharing and debate.

1. It’s meta.
@katetowsey

2. 2013.
40 user researchers.
1 content strategist.

3. videos. audio. survey data. panelist data. stuff
stuck in websites. transcriptions. consent
forms. prototypes. sketches. user journey
maps. reports. walls. users needs.
spreadsheets. notes. research plans. diary
study data. physical artefacts. photos.
discussion guides. recruitment briefs.
screeners. show and tells. et cetera. et cetera.

4. 99% of people feel
they’re failing at filing.

5. User research assets:
treasure or trash?

6. 1. Help you understand that it’s
not just you.
2. Give some context for the
problem.
3. Show you how I think we can
simplify the problem.
4. Make what I know ‘open-
source’.

7. Emotion and context.
Not technology.

8. 1. Guilt.

9. 2. We care.

10. 3. Trust.

11. 4. Insecure.

12. 5. What if?

13. 6. We want to know
first hand.

14. 7. We don’t look back.

15. 8. Self-focused.
Now-focused.

16. 9. Overwhelmed.

17. General Data Protection
Regulation (GDP).
ico.org.uk

18. 1. Project organisation
kind of stuff.
2. Research data.
3. Outcomes.

19. 1. Do an audit.

20. • What it is.
• Where is it.
• Why you keep it.
• How much you’ve got.

21. • What it is.
• Where is it.
• Why you keep it.
• How much you’ve got.

22. 2. Mark what’s personal
data and what’s
anonymous data.

23. 3. Decide what you
want to keep and
why.

24. 4. Anonymise.

25. 5. Delete.

26. 6. Makes friends
with IT and infosec.

27. Maintenance.

28. 1. Throw stuff at it.
2. Secure.
3. Granular admin rights.
4. Butt ugly and simple is fine.

29. 1. Throw stuff at it.
2. Secure.
3. Granular admin rights.
4. Butt ugly and simple is fine.

30. What about making
outcomes useful?

31. “At first we tried to fix this problem with
technology and got very bogged down trying
to make tools work in the way we needed.
We've now decided to try a simpler approach,
focusing on what artefacts researchers create
and how they store their work. It's more about
what they store, than where they store it.”
- Katy Arnold, Home Office

32. Go forth! and file.

33. Thank you.
Questions?