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WhatWhereWhoWhenWhyHow
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Click to edit Master title styleAgenda
Finding the right people
• Introduction• Why focus on who?• What can go wrong?
• How to do it• Creative recruiting • Q & A
WHY
HOW
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Introduction
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Click to edit Master title stylePortigal Consulting is a bite-sized California firm that helps companies discover and act on new insights about their customers and themselves
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Click to edit Master title styleI started my career in coordinating research, learning first-hand how critical planning and recruiting are to success in the field
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LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
Iterate & improve
Typical development lifecycle
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LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
Iterate & improve
Take a fresh look at people
Where we work
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Iterate & improve
Use existing ideas as
hypotheses
Where we work
LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
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Iterate & improve
Where we work
LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
Is it working like we hoped?
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Iterate & improve
History provides context to
explore new ideas
Where we work
LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
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LaunchWhat to
make or doRefine & prototype
Iterate & improve
Research requires people, regardless
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Why focus on who?
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Development
Synthesis
Ideation
Fieldwork
Everything follows from fieldwork
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Click to edit Master title stylePutting the customer back in customer insights
You can’t have the insights without the customer
We focus a lot on the insights part of customer insights, but the customer part is truly foundational
Finding the very people you need for insights can become an afterthought on busy teams
Strive to put thought and decisions about who to talk to on equal footing early in the process
Competing for your attention:• Selling projects• Justifying methodology• Experimenting with methods• Identifying business questions• Identifying research questions• Fieldwork• Travel• Analyzing data• Client wrangling• Turning data into insights• Storytelling• Socializing findings• Inspiring diverse teams• Brainstorming• …Designing!
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Click to edit Master title styleFirst you’ve gotta ask
There’s another set of reasons why recruiting people is challenging
• It’s awkward to put yourself out there
• It’s hard to get people to do something for you• People will be too busy• People will be too skeptical
• It’s even harder when you can’t offer an incentive
Most people are curious, and eager to be a part of something that contributes to progress.
It’s rare that anyone is asked to talk about any aspect of their lives in detail – it’s an opportunity that many are eager to have!
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Click to edit Master title styleWhat can go wrong?
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Click to edit Master title styleConsequences of recruiting failures or oversights
Pointless interviews waste time and challenge the credibility of the work• Person doesn’t really want to talk to you• They don’t have the desired relationship
with the product/brand
Epic FAILS can verge on dangerous• Hostile environment• Hostile individuals resulting from failure
to understand the purpose of the visit
Full Disclosure: It’s gonna happen• Sometimes it will go sideways due to
recruiting snafus… and that’s OK. This can lead to happy accidents!
• Mobile technology: the woman was much more comfortable texting and emailing than talking in person… the interview was like pulling teeth
• Riding lawnmower: the participant’s mower was out of commission – trashed, rusty and stashed in the corner of the lot
• Over the counter medication: deep in the projects of Baltimore, the participant’s procured the product in question from gang members who steal it from local businesses and re-sell on the streets
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Click to edit Master title styleHow to do it
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Click to edit Master title styleHow to do it
You need people who are going to provide useful data; people who will inspire you, and inspire your design team and clients
They must have the right relationship with whatever it is you’re studying, and they need to be good to spend time with
There are four key steps:
1. Establish relevant criteria
2. Write a screener
3. Find a recruiting partner/establish a recruiting strategy
4. Build rapport prior to interview
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: How NOT to do it
Don’t simply take the client’s customer segmentation or personas and find those people
Don’t try to comprehensively represent all users and types of users of a product. It’s not an audit – be selective for quality not quantity
• Athletic gear: The archetypal persona the client design towards (brand hero) exists very rarely in the real world, and is better at inspiring marketing than informing design
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Relationship to product
What is the desired relationship to the product/service or brand? • Typical user• Non-user• Extreme user• Peripheral users• Expert user• Subject matter expert• Wanna-be user• Should-be user• Future user• Past user• Hater
There are interesting insights to be discovered from any of these depending on the business questions you are pursuing
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Relationship to product
Select a range of relationships• Find a rejecter or hater in order to
understand how they differ from the enthusiast
• Create contrast in your sample so you can see influencing factors you would otherwise miss
• Think about the sample as a thing to be designed, not “a” customer type to go after
• Build the sample as a palette to draw from
• Dog food: studied professional chefs of human food to understand adjacent trends related to food
• Portable computing: talked to people who are enthusiasts of the rival brand
• Financial instrument: equal weight given to people who did NOT choose the product
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Type of user
Which user groups should you consider? • There may be more than you think• Teams make assumptions that need
to be challenged• The myth of the primacy of the “end user”
Think about the whole system: the chooser, the influencer, the user
• Interesting things don’t happen in a vacuum
• Think about intersections
Considering and understanding this helps the team get a broader sense even prior to research who is affected by the product and who is being designed for
• Sporting goods: User groups included kids, coaches, parents, other team members, league officials
• Medical devices: User groups included nurses, pharmacists, bio-engineers, patients
• Baby products: User groups included Moms… but also Dads, other kids in the household, grandparents, friends and their kids, nannies/caregivers, gift-givers, and, of course, the ultimate end-user - babies!
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Context of use
Consider context and adjacent behaviors: owners and users of the same products will use them very differently and their needs will differ – neglecting to recognize this skews research findings
• What surrounds people will influence their use
• How people use and perceive the product/brand/service will make for very different interviews and insights
• Mobile devices: a person who commutes via public transport vs. a car-commuter
• Baby products: suburban Moms with SUVs vs. urban Moms who walk their neighborhoods
• Fitness equipment: Treadmill owners who are trying to lose weight vs. treadmill owners who are tri-athletes
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: How many?
Anywhere from 6 to 72! It’s a balance of insuring a critical mass of data, covering the criteria you’ve established and operating under more tangible constraints such as time and budget
Contributing factors can also include• Regional differences in product use or
behavior• Number of segments of actual, expected
or desired users the team wants to cover• Number of client team members
interested in participating
• Lawnmowers: 72 households studied across 7 states and 3 European countries, to cover region, cultural differences and current products in use
• Home ambiance: 6 women covering a range of types of households, product use and odor challenges
• Over the counter medication: certain regions of the country use completely different forms of products to treat the same symptoms
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Demographics
• Gender• Age• Life-stage and lifestyle
• Married• Stage of family• Retirement• Not in the middle of a major life-
change (unless that’s of interest)
• Dwelling• Suburban – Urban – Rural – Town• Apartment – Condo – Single Family
home
• Race• Reflect the general or regional
population• Reflect the user-base
• Occupation• Not overlapping with any industry
directly or indirectly related to the client or the topic at hand
• Income• You probably want the person to be
unencumbered by socio-economic barriers to using the product. To put it bluntly, participants will need to have a comfortable enough income and life-situation that they will not be focused on talking to you about how whatever you are researching needs to be cheaper.
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: The softer side
Whatever their relationship with the product/brand/service - you want the person to be engaged, have a point of view, care about the thing, and be articulate
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Click to edit Master title style1. Relevant criteria: Create a briefing sheet
Sketch it out on whiteboard or paper; iterate
Visualizing it helps surface details and potential issues
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener
Screeners are very formal, linear documents, with several critical purposes
• Figure out if the person fits your carefully developed criteria
• Not letting details slip through the cracks… a critical tool in avoiding the kinds of failures we discussed!
• Preventing bias in the participant by not tipping your hand (which can affect the research)
• Convincing people to participate
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener
There are ways to streamline this process
• Reuse previous ones (yours or the client’s)• Look for surveys on the web
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener
Screeners have three main sections
• Introduction• Checking off criteria• Invitation to participate
Even if you aren’t going to use the screener, write the screener!
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener: Introduction
Give away a little bit but not too much
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener: Checking off criteria
Employ skip logic to guide recruiters; try to keep it straightforward
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Click to edit Master title style2. Write the screener: Invitation
Lay it on thick!
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Click to edit Master title style3. Find a recruiting partner
How to find them• http://www.bluebook.org/• Referrals
What matters about the recruiter?• Local• Database and methodology• Responsiveness• Flexibility• Creativity
Be specific about how to work with them• Establish the frequency of reporting to you• Give them tools that dove-tail into your process
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Click to edit Master title style4. Build rapport with the participants
Connect prior to the interview: first by email and then by phone
• Friendly but professional tone• Assure them of the informality and
your objectives• Thank them profusely for their
participation• Ask for any special instructions or
anything you need to know• Baby will be napping• There will also be contractors in the home• Grandma will be around• Need to go through security to gain access• Has a go pick up kids right after the
interview
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Click to edit Master title style4. Build rapport with the participants
Confirm, confirm, confirm! • Length of interview• Who is coming and when• VIDEOTAPING• What needs to be done to prepare (usually nothing!)• What they will be asked (and asked to do)
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Click to edit Master title styleCreative recruiting
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Click to edit Master title styleCreative recruiting
We tend to believe in working with recruiting professionals• Consistent process• Saves time• Lends professionalism• Layer of ethical protection (identity, privacy)
Our clients frequently lament the dated methods that recruiters employ, and we concur. There is room for innovation in recruiting. Try to find creative partners.
But what if you can’t use a professional recruiter?
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Click to edit Master title styleCreative recruiting
Outside of the traditional method of working with a recruiter, there are other approaches
• Friends and Family/Social Network Recruiting• Snowball Recruiting• Craig’s List• Intercepts• Proactive Outreach• You can probably help us add to this list!
Pros and cons• Cheap but time-consuming• Quick but harder to control and manage (tempting to sacrifice process for
results)• Likely to find “pure” participants but they might be too close to you (talking
to yourself)
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A book by Steve Portigal
The Art and Craft of User Research Interviewinghttp://rosenfeldmedia.com/books/user-interviews/
Lots more great tips coming soon!
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Click to edit Master title styleWrap it up
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One new thing I
learned today is…
I’ve got a tip (that you
didn’t cover) that works
well for me…Yeah, I’ve
got a question for ya…
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Portigal Consultingwww.portigal.com
Steve @[email protected]
Julie [email protected]
Wyatt [email protected]
Thank you!
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