Summary
User research is storytelling, says designer and UX expert. Like a movie, user research needs to tell a good story to get the most out of it. Foundational research (also called generative, discovery, or initial research) helps you understand users and identify their problems.
Erika Hall writes about minimum viable ethnography, which can be as simple as spending 15 minutes with a user. Storytelling is the key to this process, and knowing how to tell a good story is the only way to get stakeholders to really care about doing more research.
In-person usability research is a much richer experience. Stakeholders can experience the sessions with other stakeholders. Remote sessions can reach a wider audience. As researchers, you have less control over how these sessions go, but this can sometimes help you understand users even better.
The benefit of usability testing is that you get to see real users interact with the designs in real time. This can help you not only identify problems but also glean why they're problems in the first place. By the end of the sessions, you’ll have a much clearer picture of how usable the designs are.
Nancy Duarte in the Harvard Business Review offers an approach to structuring presentations that follow a persuasive story. This type of structure aligns well with research results, and particularly results from usability tests. The researcher is the narrator, who paints a picture of the issues and what the future of the product could look like.
You need to get stakeholders interested in how the story ends. By the end, the stakeholders should walk away with a purpose and an eagerness to resolve the product’s ills. So the next time that you’re planning research with clients or speaking to stakeholders, think about how you can weave in some storytelling.
