Slides Chris Butler recently used in his discussion w/ mentees of The Product Mentor. Synopsis: When talking with people (aka 'users') about our products what should we be 'discovering?' Through this talk, we discuss the methods by which we do great user research, synthesis, and decision making with what we learn. The Product Mentor is a program designed to pair Product Mentors and Mentees from around the World, across all industries, from start-up to enterprise, guided by the fundamental goals…Better Decisions. Better Products. Better Product People. Throughout the program, each mentor leads a conversation in an area of their expertise that is live streamed and available to both mentee and the broader product community. http://TheProductMentor.com

1. User Research
is about Surprise
The Product Mentor Session 10
For references and more info:
https://tinyurl.com/yyjyvsqn

2. Chris Butler
Director of AI @ Philosophie NYC
TBPP 2016, TPM 4/6-10
18 years of product and BD
Microsoft, Waze, Horizon Ventures,
KAYAK, and started my own company
(failed)
chrizbo@gmail.com
@chrizbot

3. User research
● Why do user research?
● Research cycle
○ Planning
○ Execution
○ Synthesis
● Research in your process
● Future of research

4. Why do user research?

7. “[We must] discard our
hopes of finding neat,
elegant mental models...”

8. “...learn to understand the
messy, sloppy,
incomplete, and indistinct
structures that people
actually have.”
- Dan Norman, Some observations on mental models

9. 1.Our models ≠ our user’s models

11. 2. Reduce bias (and risk) of
building the wrong thing

13. 3. You will have a better
user experience

15. 4. Really learn about your
competitors

16. Recap: Why invest in user research?
1. Our models ≠ our user’s models
2. Reduce risk of building the wrong thing
3. You will have a better user experience
4. Really learn about your competitors

17. User research cycle

18. Activities:
● Planning
● Interview guide draft
● Recruitment
● Scheduling
Activities:
● Interviews or visits
Activities:
● Review
● Synthesis
● Distribution
Plan
● What is our question?
● Which type of research is
best?
● Who/how should we
recruit?
Execute
● How do we reduce our
bias?
● How do we reduce the bias
of our interviewees?
Synthesize
● What did we learn?
● What is surprising to us
and our stakeholders?

19. My “stack” for research
● Craigslist, LinkedIn, etc. - recruiting
● Calend.ly - scheduling
● Zoom - for remote interviews and recording
● Google Docs - interview scripts and synthesis
● Google Sheets - rainbow spreadsheet for usability
● AirTable - for nuggets
● Temi - for transcription

20. It always starts with a
directed question...

22. Planning user research

23. Interview guide
● Instructions
● Background
● How they do things today
● Testing new things

25. Recruitment
● Recruit yourself by posting ads, but ask open ended questions
○ Or use recruitment services
● Offer compensation $25-$300
● Make all requirements clear before the interview

26. Executing user research

27. Methods
● Sales safari
● Contextual inquiry
● SME/stakeholder/customer interviews
● Usability tests
● Surveys
● Focus groups

28. Sales safari

29. Contextual inquiry

30. Usability and prototype testing

31. Focus groups

32. Surveys

34. “Good” interviews
● Observe people, in their own environments
● Don’t ask them leading, biased, or yes/no questions
● Do ask them open ended questions, what they have done
in the past
● If you can answer your own questions they (probably)
aren’t good questions

35. Example of questions
Not:
● “Do you go to the gym?”
● “How often do you go to the gym?”
● “Do you hate going to the gym?”
Instead:
● “Tell me about the last time you went to the gym…”
● “How did you feel the last time before you went to the gym? After?”

36. Most importantly: you
aren’t there to look
smart, be quiet

37. Synthesizing user research

44. Presentation to stakeholders
● Great quotes
● What (new things) did we learn about:
○ Personas?
○ Current process?
○ Our prototype?
● What should we do/consider?

46. Research in your process

47. Start small and simple
then iterate

48. “Two Hours Every Six
Weeks For Everyone”
- Jared Spool

50. Research output
shouldn’t go directly
into your backlog

51. Research <-> You <-> Backlog

52. Future

59. Thank you
For references and more info:
https://tinyurl.com/yyjyvsqn