How to prepare a large team for a successful UX research trip
This article was featured on UX Planet.
Planning a research trip with a multidisciplinary team? You may find yourself in user interviews or focus groups with colleagues who’ve never conducted research before. Taking colleagues from your product team on research trips is a great opportunity to spread the gospel and help others see the value effective research has on your digital product. But how can you ensure quality research while coordinating across a large team? Below are some tips on how best to prepare your team for a successful research trip.
Preparing your team for research:
Create discussion guides: Putting together a detailed discussion guide will make sure anyone conducting interviews understands the major research questions you’re looking to answer and has a toolbox of open-ended questions to draw from. It also helps ensure a certain level of uniformity across interviews, reducing the risk of bias. All team members should be well-versed in this before sitting down in front of a user.
Distribute pre-reads: Distribute any pre-reading or other background material your team should know about before the trip. This can include the discussion guide described above as well as learnings from any previous research trips or any relevant news or history on the locale you’re traveling to.
Divide people into interview groups: Divide people up into groups of three for interviews. One person will conduct the interview (based on the discussion guide), one will take notes, and one will take care of all other logistics like keeping track of time, maintaining any video or audio equipment, managing prototypes, etc. As much as possible, aim for diversity (of age, gender, profession, etc) within each interview group.
Lead a pre-trip training session: The week before your planned trip, lead a pre-trip session to distribute all of the above materials, explain groupings, and go over best-practices. This is also a great opportunity to explain any sensitivities your users may have, make sure everyone is aware of the product or prototype you’ll be testing, and lead mock interviews to make sure everyone is well-versed in the discussion guide.
Taking employees out of the office and into the field always comes with a certain level of unpredictability. You can’t control for everything and some things will inevitably go wrong. Follow these steps and you’ll set yourself up for a smoother research trip with a more engaged and more research-oriented team.
Want to know what to do post-trip to rapidly synthesize your qualitative interviews? Check out my other article here.
