2-Day User Research Conference

Overview

I was the user experience lead for a regional trade group redesign of their public facing website. I oversaw the creation and administration of a 2-day user discovery conference for the project. Using a mix of research activities, I collected the information needed to successfully inform the redesign to be user centered with high value and appeal.

The Conference

To ensure the widest range of voice in our user experiences discovery, we converted a yearly stakeholder retreat hosted by the trade group into a user research conference. I broke the conference into three information gathering environments: one-on-one interviews, focus groups, and workshops.

One-on-One Interviews

I conducted ten 45-minute interviews with a cross section of the trade group’s membership, focusing on how they used the data in their day-to-day work, typical use case for the data, and diving deeper into topics that were brought up in the focus group and workshops. 

Takeaways

These interviews lead to the 4 distinct personas I used to help the client understand their user base, eschew scope creep, and onboard new members of the production team.

Focus groups

I used a variety of exercises such as Rose-Bud-Thorn, the most “…”, and “How might we…” to help focus the groups on what worked well, what could be improved, and new opportunities for the redesign. This helped me understand what was working and worth keeping versus what should be reworked.

Takeaway

These exercises helped identify the pain points in the current website and where we should focus our redesign efforts.

Workshops

 I led the groups through a quantitative metric usage exercise, story boarding activities and plenty of whiteboard space. This helped me understand how some of their power users the current paper version of the report and what they felt was next.

Takeaway

These workshops help me prioritize the homepage of the new website and what should be brought over from the paper report.

Analysis

With the information collected from the conference, I created a detailed written report, a set of personas, and a set of low fidelity mock ups.

Written report

I split the written report into the overarching topics discovered throughout the conference. For each topic, I write an executive summary, related feedback with the level of importance, and the design implications that came from the feedback.

Impact

The written report was used to identify the most acute pain points for the current users, and was able to help scope the parameters of the redesign.

Personas

In combination with the Written report, I created 4 personas to help the trade group understand their users. Each came a short bio, personal traits and a quote to help humanize each persona. I then added a few user stories and a scenario to assist conversations surrounding features and prioritization.

Impact

The personas were used in several planning sessions to evaluate future requests and content creation.

Wireframes

The final step I took was to create a set of wireframes to help the RTG understand how different layouts could affect the user experience of the end users. I moved the final mock up and a low fidelity mock up as point of reference for their next step.

Impact

The wireframes help the RTG quickly iterate over different layouts and test different user flows.

Impact

Although the contract ended before post launch analysis could be done, I was told anecdotally by the trade group that the website was received positively and the research we conducted was instrumental in its success.