Blog from April, 2020

When it comes to conducting user research, presenting UX work, or collaborating with other team members or stakeholders, we know that face-to-face interaction can have a lot of advantages: It’s easier for participants to build trust and rapport in person than remotely, and attendees are likely to pay attention and be cooperative for longer.

However, we can’t always conduct UX activities face to face. Sometimes, budget or time limitations, travel restrictions, or other unforeseen circumstances make in-person sessions impossible, unaffordable, or even unsafe. In these cases, remote sessions can offer immense value in maintaining the flow of insights and ideas.  

Additionally, remote UX sessions offer many benefits that in-person sessions do not, regardless of the circumstances:

• Flexibility in project funds: Remote sessions lower travel expenses. This reduction might free up monetary resources for other valuable activities, such as recruiting additional research participants, doing extra rounds of research, or providing deeper analysis.
• Increased inclusiveness: Location and space are no longer limitations with remote sessions. For user research, this means access to a more diverse group of participants to whom you might not have access locally. For UX workshops and presentations, it means nonlocal colleagues can easily attend and more people in general can participate. (However, it doesn’t mean that everyone should attend. Continue to limit attendance to relevant roles.)
• Attendee convenience: Participants might be more willing and able to attend remote sessions that don’t require them to leave their office or home. They’ll save the commute time (whether that’s a couple of hours driving to a research facility or a few days traveling to a workshop in another city), and they can participate from the comfort of their own space. Especially with remote, unmoderated research or remote, asynchronous ideation, participants can complete tasks on their own schedule.

Given these advantages, remote UX work can be a useful solution to many project challenges. This article provides guidelines and resources for transitioning 3 types of common UX activities to the digital sphere:

1. Conducting user research
2. Facilitating and presenting
3. Collaborating and brainstorming

Remote User Research

Generally, we recommend in-person usability testing and user interviews whenever possible. It’s simply easier to catch and read participant body language and recognize which breaks in dialogue are appropriate times to probe or ask followup questions. However, remote testing is preferable to no testing at all, and remote user research can accelerate insights on tight timelines and budgets.

Tips for Remote User Research

• Practice using the technology: Even if you are familiar with the tool you’ll be using, do a practice run with a colleague or friend. Particularly for remote, unmoderated sessions, make sure instructions for signing in and completing tasks are clear. Plan initial pilot testing with a few users so you can adjust technology and other factors as needed, before launching the study.
• Recruit additional users: With remote, unmoderated research, you can’t help if a handful of remote interviews or usability tests are rendered useless due to unsolvable surprise technology issues on the user’s end, such as firewalls. Recruit more users than you think you need in order to create a proactive safety net.
• Plan for technology challenges: Technology mishaps will occur. Assume technology challenges will happen, and don’t panic when they do. Have a backup plan ready, such as a phone dial-in in addition to a web link for user interviews and, whenever possible, use a platform that doesn’t require participants to download anything to join the session.
• Provide instructions: If the technology tool is complex or users will be setting it up and using it over an extended time, create documentation specific to the features you’ll ask them to use. For example, for our digital diary studies using shared Evernote notebooks, we provide detailed documentation for participants on how to set up and use the platform.
• Adjust consent forms: If you’ll be recording the participant’s face, voice, or screen while conducting a remote session, update your consent form to ask for explicit permission for each of these items. If you plan on asking additional researchers to join the session or if you’ll share recordings among the team during postsession analysis, outline and ask for consent on these items, as well.

Tools for Remote User Research

Consider tools that match the needs of your study, and, as always, match appropriate research methods to your study goals. Remote research is certainly better than no research at all; however, invalid insights are not helpful in any situation.

• Remote, unmoderated sessions: Tools such as Lookback, dscout, and Userbrain help capture qualitative insights from video recordings and think-aloud narration from users. Tools such as Koncept App and Maze capture quantitative metrics such as time spent and success rate. Many platforms have both qualitative and quantitative capabilities, such as UserZoom and UserTesting. (Be sure to check whether these tools work well with mobile applications, as needed.)
• Remote, moderated sessions: Any video conferencing platform that has screensharing, call recording and the ability to schedule meetings in advance is likely to meet the needs of most teams. Zoom, GoToMeeting, and Google Hangouts Meet are frequently used. (Remember to consider platforms that do not require participants to download anything to join the meeting.)

Source: NN/g