 Hi, I'm Amr and I'm the lead user researcher at AJN Smart and today We're going to be talking about is user research worth it in 2019 Was that too slow? I forgot what year it was Okay, so today we're going to be talking about user research and whether or not you should actually bother with it in 2019 So just real quick user research is basically you talking to users and getting information from them So that when you're designing a product you actually design something that people want Like the short answer should you do it or not? No, and yes So sorry for that non answer. I'll tell you why I chose to say that way No, as in not in the traditional way not in the way that most people will tell you to do user research We don't believe in that we still believe in user research, but in a different way But first let me give you some background and talk about like some history about user research So this whole you know user-centered design and UX research Revolution started about a decade ago It started basically when people realized that their products are failing and when they investigated why? Turns out that people didn't want their product They hated them and so they started asking people what they wanted before they built the products and they found that Oh, this is actually good for business So this is where this whole thing came from people started going into user-centered design And this whole focus on the user because it was good for business, but like all things, you know You swing back and forth it used to be a really bad where nobody talked to the user and then a few years ago about you know Five years ago it became too much in the other direction and the user was everything Which we also think is the wrong direction and you should avoid doing that So the focus now is so much on the user that it's ignoring the business Which is the wrong way to go about it because at the end of the day what you want is For the product to be successful and if you prioritize to the user to an extent where the product itself suffers or the business Suffers then you're not doing your job Because your job should be to have a long Term product that is successful in the market And if you prioritize the user over the business and not worry about Aligning those two together then you're going to go out of business Which is not what your users want your user want you to be in the business as long as possible And now i'm going to tell you how we think about user research at agent smart and how we believe you should do it as well so we think the best way to do user research is Drumroll by doing design sprints now for all of you who are watching us who are already familiar with the way we do things This is not going to be such a shock for you We love design sprints and the reason we love them actually is because they are the best way to do User research now there is a bit of controversy here because some people think that doing a design sprint means skipping user research When it's not the case at all Design sprints are actually a form of user research. What's different about it is You are putting something tangible in the hands of the user instead of just asking them hypothetical questions So the most important thing that comes out of a design sprint is the learnings you get from the users It's not the prototype people think it's the prototype, but the prototype is throw away It's not the thing that you actually care about what you care about is All of the feedback and the insights that you get from talking to the users when you show them your prototype And knowing whether or not they care about your idea Whether it works for them or not by the way, if you don't know what a design sprint is or you just heard But you're not sure you can click somewhere in the video and you'll watch Another one of our videos that explains exactly what it is So that's why we think design sprints are the best form of user research because see the only real user research You're going to have is once you launch your product put it into the market and know whether or not Your customers actually want it But if you want to have Some sort of research before that it's best to get as close as possible To you know having a real product in your user's hands so that you can get More realistic answers and the way that we found to do it real fast Is doing design sprints that way you don't spend a lot a bunch of time up front You spend only less than a week you put a prototype in front of your customers And you get much more realistic feedback than going out into the field and asking them about something that they haven't even seen So that's why we think design sprints are the best way To do user research All right, now let's get into the nitty gritty of what we do In preparation for a sprint because that's also part of the research now The first thing that we do is we prepare a form for everyone who's going to be joining us from the client side To fill out so we send them this form and i'm going to show you what this looks like We start off with a question that says what are the top two things you'd like to get out of the sprint? This is for us to know What they actually need And to see if everyone on the client side is coming in with the same goal because you'd be surprised how many times people are coming in with Different assumptions different goals different expectations So we have a few answers to help them out A lot of businesses come in to validate ideas. They use sprints to validate ideas instead of investing In building a product they run a sprint on it and they see whether or not this is an idea that their customers actually want Some some companies want to do it to redesign an existing product Or increase the engagement of it Some want to do UI design increase user activation Or rethink the business model of a product Clear vision and direction. This is something that you get out of every sprint and even if people don't check this they're usually very Happy that they got this out of the sprint because a lot of times people don't have their visions synced up about the product and This is something that you always get out of the sprint and it's super valuable for for all of the clients that we've worked with All right, and then we have a couple others like defining what the usp should be Or prioritizing the project timeline and agile backlog Basically, if they just want to go into development, which brings us to the next question of after the sprint What do you want to do? We ask this question so that we can tailor the report that we give them at the end Accordingly if we know like what is their next step because the sprint is so great at giving you momentum And just going you know having a really great start And we want to help our clients carry that momentum throughout their work on the product And we ask them what is the best way for us, you know, what is the best format? What are the assets or what are the most important things that you need to get out of the sprint and plug Right into the next step so that you can continue just moving fast and iterating Sometimes if it's just an idea that it's not validated that means what they want to do after the sprint is get Further buy-in from the organization and get funding. It might be an idea that you know a couple people have Within a company, but they don't have the funding for it So they run a sprint because they can do it really fast and without investing a ton of money into developing a product And they get validation for it and then they can show like the prototype and the user feedback To their bosses and get permission to run with this project Or if they've already decided that they know for sure like maybe they already have a product on the market And they have the data that tells them they should be building a specific product Then they know they want to pass the outcomes immediately They like the prototype to an internal team that keeps working on it Maybe like to design it further or maybe go into development straight away. This is More rare since you know the sprint doesn't take care of the whole design But sometimes if you run maybe like A couple sprints back to back then you can go Into development after the sprint then we ask them Basically, if you know anything about the sprint, you know that there's the concept of the long-term goal And we kind of prime Our clients before they join the sprint to think about what that might look like so that where When they are in the room during the sprint They've already kind of given it some thought and they can answer this More smoothly in the sprint because they've already thought about it when they submitted this form. So we ask them To say, you know in two years time our product or service will be dot dot dot And we ask them to fill out, you know to complete that sentence The next question is we ask them who their target customer is This helps us understand, you know who we're designing for which is crucial and super important And they give us, you know, usually very good descriptions of who their users are Is it a b2b company? Is it a b2c? What is the age group? Are the users who primarily are on mobile or still on desktop if it's for example some You know b2b solution that service reps use or something like that And this also helps us Already put out a form to recruit users before we start the sprint once we know who the target customer is So this question is very important question number four Then we ask them who their biggest competitors are so that we can also take a look at the market since we Work with companies from various different industries Not just the tech industry and so we ask them who is your biggest competitor Who do you want to beat and we take a look at their solutions before the sprint so that we're informed on what that market looks like Then we ask them to name, you know, one to three companies or products that really inspire their team so that We can incorporate some of that design Into the product because this is something that they want to emulate So if you like apple and you like their design values of just being minimal and simple and clear That helps us a lot in knowing how we're going to design the prototype for them And what kind of you know aspects or values or elements we can borrow From other design systems or other companies And this last question is actually really interesting because we've added it only recently We've gotten a ton of great answers from clients about it And the question is what are some ideas or directions that you'd like to explore during the sprint? Maybe something that you've wanted The company to try but haven't had the chance because a lot of people who work at companies They get constant, you know ideas about how they can improve their product or their service But they just don't have the time they don't have the resources to try these things out And they just want an outlet to you know Try and see is this a good idea or not and the sprint is the perfect You know Vessel for this for them to like play around And test out their idea So we're really happy that we added this question. This form is like a work in progress We're always updating it. We try to keep it short. So sometimes we take a question out and put something else in Or we rephrase a question So we're always constantly improving But right now these are the questions that we have The last couple of questions. This is where we ask them if you have any previous Documents that you've worked on that you can share that would be relevant for the sprint because sometimes Companies have already tried to build something and maybe they've designed some internal prototype Before they've come into the sprint or they've explored an idea and they want to explore it further So it's really useful for our team to have that context and to know if this is going to be what we're going to be working on If we're going to be continuing down a direction that they've already started It's super valuable for us to know that and so we asked them to share that but we say this is not Mandatory you can just share this if you have it and that's it We say thank you for your time and we'll get in touch if you have any other questions You can ask us right here So that's the form that we send to our clients and everyone on the client side who will be joining the sprint has to answer that So that we can get the best, you know Possible picture about their business before we start the sprint So after we have all the answers from the form from our clients, we schedule a few calls Maybe not with everyone from the client side, but definitely with the decider And maybe one or two extra people that the decider recommends we talked to before this sprint So now that we have the answers From the form that they submitted we get on a call to just go more in depth and have the decider explain Exactly how their company works How their existing product works or the new product that they Want to be working on what is going to be, you know the business model for it Why are they you know going into this in the first place? Do they have specific targets that they want to meet? How does the industry work in general? So those are like this conversation is super valuable The form doesn't go deep enough and it's just better to Have this out all on a call because it's much easier for the client that way And then we're taking notes during that call that we can share with the entire team from our side And after we're done with that call We go out with all the information that we have and we start looking for some lightning demos that we're going to Show off during the sprint during the lightning demos exercise And we start looking at solutions from within the industry and from outside the industry that might be relevant in terms of Interactions for example, if it's going to be a two-sided marketplace You know uber could be an example because you have the driver side and you have the rider side Things like that and then once we're done with that we move on to preparing how might we questions Those would be questions that you know, we want to ask To everyone in the room and have them answer during the expert interview section And those are usually super good for us to know More about the client's business maybe stuff that came up after we talked to the decider Or if we want to hear from more people on the team who we didn't have calls with Could be for example someone who's on the customer support role or in the marketing role And see what their perspective on the problem is So that does it in terms of the preparation that we do before this sprint Now we're going to fast forward to the end of the sprint because in this video we're talking Mostly about the user research that's involved The last thing I want to show you in this video is what we use to capture notes during the user interviews And we use a tool called real-time board and there are other tools that do the same But we are really comfortable with this one and we really like it So i'm going to show you our template that we have set up in real-time board that we use for every sprint So this is the template zoomed all the way out What we're going to be focusing on in this video is this little thing right here This other one is something maybe we can go Go into in another video. This is what we use for the iteration week Because at adn smart we always run two sprints back to back and our second sprint is usually done Remotely not in person. So we use real-time board for our iteration sprint as well So today we're going to be focusing on this section right here called week one And specifically we're going to be zooming in on this part right here So this looks like the wall of justice, which is explained in the sprint book But we just have it in digital form so that it's searchable And it's much better For you know sharing with the client So the way we have it set up is that we have Five columns one for each user that we're going to be testing with on thursday And then we have the rows that usually correspond to the screens that we have in the prototype so that you have For example the welcome screen and then the onboarding and sign in screen and all of that So we would rename all of these to the Name of the screen and in the beginning we have a few primer questions just to Get the user comfortable and you know in the context of what we're going to be talking about So if we were doing an app about you know watching the news then we would ask them Okay, how do you currently watch the news and what apps do you use and all of that? And just before this section right here I have a little script that I use if you want you can pause the video And just see exactly what we have written in here It's just basically me introducing myself and The person who's next to me who's going to be taking notes We give a little bit of an idea of what The thing that we're going to be talking to them about today is And just basically some stuff that you say when you're doing user interviews Then we go right into it and we have like this kind of coloring system So that when a user says something that is good We use a green note when they say something that's not that they don't like About our product. We use some an orange note and we just copy and paste these You know just like any other design program, you know, if you option drag then you Copy it. So what we do is we make a few copies in the beginning and then as they're getting feedback They say something good And they say I don't like this And this is basically how we capture feedback going through the real-time board and at the end We ask them a few questions once we've shown them all the screens We ask them a few questions to round it out We ask what did they like what didn't they like What would they change about this product and how disappointed would they be We got this from like the book hacking growth How disappointing would they be if they couldn't use our product then we ask them for a rating And finally we just have kind of a yes no summary Of the sprint question. So here we paste in the sprint questions that we Decide in the beginning of the sprint and we say for this user is the answer yes or no For this can we question and if you're not sure what can we questions are You can just look up one of our videos that talks about it And it'll tell you everything that you need to know That's everything that we had to show you for this video I'd love to know how you guys think of the way that we do things at agent smart. Do you agree? Do you disagree? Let's just have a conversation if you disagree. Tell us why if you agree But you have you know other suggestions for us We'd love to hear those and let's just talk all about it in the comments below If you like this video Obviously, please do all of the things of you know like and subscribe And all of that and tell us what else you would like to to know about Thank you so much for watching and see you in another video You can like have an arrow quickly at the in the video like pointing at the thing sent to fidget Be talking about it Screw that up already Keep that in