How I Improved Design Processes with Effective Tools
Context
When I became a part of the team it was not a founded company but they had an idea they wanted to test on users and get my view upon. And they called this idea to a product UserLab.io. They had already development a first version so my job was to get to know our users more in depth and test it before we moved on in the development process.
Description of UserLab.io
UserLab.io was a tool for designers and professionals to plan and recruit user research and analyze the findings afterwards. It was divided into five steps that should help the user through the process.
Description of UserBooking.io
The idea about UserBooking.io came up as a result of the user test of UserLab.io and I will elaborate more on that when I go through my process of testing UserLab.io.
UserBooking.io is a specialized tool to help organize and plan recruitment of users. The tool is developed to quickly book users into your own calendar.
Process
I started by getting to know UserLab.io as a product and what it could do at the time. I wanted to get to know the product on my own because the other teammember shouldn’t color my view and questions. I could use my questions and wondering to create a better interviewguide for the user test. This was very important to me as I needed to be aware and carefull about not letting my own experience and assumptions as a designer affect the users.
The test setup
I created an interviewguide where I started introducing the setup. This is something I always do as I think it is important that the user feels sure about what is going to happen.
Interviewguide
After my introduction I took a step back in my interviewguide and prepared for a small interview before the actual test. I did this because much of the development of the tool was created upon own experience and assumptions. We needed to know more about our users and their process to define the best user experience.
The interviewguide was semi-structured and I planned the whole user test so we during the test would have the time to talk about specifics if anything came up. I usually create semi-structured interviewguides as I think it is important to catch interesting things during the interview. This can as well be an important finding.
Findings
The findings from the user tests quickly showed that it was easy to see what the purpose of the product was. But it also showed that the product itself was too laborious as all these steps are steps they are so experienced in and don’t need help for. The findings also revealed that recruiting a user as a part of planning user research actually are the most difficult part of it as it takes too much time to plan, organize with calendars. And WUPTI the idea about UserBooking.io came up as a result of this.
Based on the findings about UserLab.io I also created two personas and a Customer Journey for to collect all the insights (see below). We should use both the personas and the customer journey internally in the team to align on the understanding of our users and to figure out how we could come closer to a more intuitive and meaningful digital solution.
UserBooking.io
UserBooking.io were another idea which I I am in the middle of creating a functional prototype for version 2.0 which is based upon a whole redesign after a user test that I also held together with one of the other teammembers. You can see a picture of the Sketch file here below. On the right, I have the handdrawn sketches of the redesign and on the left I am creating the prototype.
Reflections
My experience from the user test of UserLab.io have really set some traces in my way of thinking as a designer. I am always very carefull when I know I have some assumptions or meanings about a particular subject. I try to be aware of it in a more explicit way so that I hopefully don’t affect the users or my designs too much during development.
Both UserLab.io and UserBooking.io are created to help and ease the processes around involving users in the development process. Even though we put UserLab.io on hold for a while, we got some really good insights in the processes of design professionals. Hopefully, we will succeed with UserBooking.io. This tool could be a way of getting more companies to involve their users in a development process.